Billionaire Bill Ackman’s Pershing Square makes moves on Berkshire Hathaway aspirations
FTSE 100 trust Pershing Square has made further steps towards billionaire manager Bill Ackman’s aspiration to emulate Berkshire Hathaway by building a diversified holding company.
Pershing Square Capital Management, which runs the investment trust, has made a further $900m investment into property company Howard Hughes, bringing Ackman’s stake in the firm to 46.9 per cent.
After the company previously rejected an offer for Ackman to raise his stake in the firm to 48 per cent, the FTSE 100 trust has agreed to limit its voting power to 40 per cent and ownership to a 47 per cent stake.
“We believe HHH is a superb platform to build a faster-growing, high-returning holding company that will acquire control of companies that meet Pershing Square’s criteria for business quality and durable growth,” Ackman said.
The move is part of a wider goal for Ackman to transform Pershing Square into a more diversified holding company over just holding large cap equities, similar to Berkshire Hathaway.
Over the weekend, Berkshire Hathaway CEO and president Warren Buffett announced he would be standing down at the end of the year.
The famed American investor is set to leave his post after 60 years, leaving Greg Abel, chair of Berkshire Hathaway Energy, to take over from 2026.
The FTSE 100 trust is down almost nine per cent since the start of the year, thanks to Ackman’s big bets on tariff-exposed stocks like Nike.
Ackman has been a strong opponent of US tariffs despite still backing president Donald Trump, calling yesterday for an 180 day pause to the import taxes.
In contrast, Buffett has traditionally stayed out of politics, though he still spoke out about the negative impact of tariffs at Berkshire’s annual general meeting.
At the start of the year, 9.8 per cent of Pershing Square was made up of Howard Hughes stock.
As part of the purchase, Howard Hughes has agreed to pay Pershing Square a quarterly fee for “investment, advisory, and other ancillary services”, which will reduce the trust’s management fee by a comparable amount.
The trust currently charges 1.5 per cent of the value of its underlying assets to investors annually.
Pershing Square board member Jean-Baptiste Wautier has also been appointed as a non-executive director of Howard Hughes.