>> this is my kitchen table that

difficult and kind i ever thought was a and then i started interviewing. i learned from doing it appears that leaders make it to the top. >> i asked him how much he wanted, he said 250, i said no problem. >> you have no problem being the second wealthiest man in the world, is that right? one of the most successful wall street businessman has been bill ackman. he has also been outspoken in a number of other areas including philanthropy and politics. i had a chance to sit down with bill in his office recently and talk about a variety of issues including his latest bet on where the economy is going. >> there is a general consensus in the united states that we

probably have avoided a percentage for the near future. we will have a so-called soft landing. that is the consensus. is that your view as well? >> it is really hard to predict. i think the economy is weakening. we are seeing evidence of that in some of our companies. i have some concerns. there has been a huge subsidy in terms of interest rates and most companies fix their rates or their debt at very low rates and certainly real estate investors did the same. and that works until doesn't work. what is going to be interesting is to see what happens when people get to have to replace their debt and i think i can have a cliff like a fax. u.s. and sadly seen that in real estate. ? is are assuming on the markets are not always right but the markets are assuming there will be a fed discount cut sometime next year and as we talk now about the -- about the end of november, it is not clear what the fed will do but some people say the fed if they were to cut interest rates next year would

help the democrats and therefore be seen as very political. some people say the fed can't wait till after the election because the economy money stimulus. do you have a view on what the fed is likely to do? >> i think it will cut rates and cut them sooner than most people expect because what is happening is the real rate of interest ultimately which is impacting the economy and keeps increasing as inflation declines. if the fed keeps rates in the middle fives and inflation is trending below 3%, that is a really high real rate of interest. i think that is having a retarding effect on the economy and many businesses and many individuals have benefited from fixed rate debt. that fixed rate debt for companies and for commercial real estate star symbol also i think there is a risk -- a hard landing at the fed does not start cutting rates present. i think the market expects it is probably as early as q1. >> for the economy itself do you

think it is going to make a difference if president trump is the republican nominee and elected or if president biden is the democratic nominee and is elected? >> leadership matters enormously. everything from the economy to geopolitics. i think we will have a broader selection than trump and biden. i think biden has done a lot of good things. but i think his legacy will not be a good one if he is the nominee. i think the right thing for buying to do is to step aside and say he is not going to run and create the opportunity for some competition. i think he is past his prime. it is a bit like being ceo of a major company. it is a full-time job and you need to be at your -- he had to be strong, you need to be at your intellectual best and i don't think biden is there. i don't say that with any division of the president. by always respect the president

and want to have the president is to be successful i think he's clearly past his physical and cognitive peak. >> you are young, inexperienced investment professional perk up have you ever thought about running for office yourself? >> if the country wanted me at some point, i would be open to it. it is not my time. i still have a lot of work to do and if i would ever take that step, i would have to do -- i would have to find myself at a time in life when i felt ready to take on the kind of response ability but it is something where the country would have to ask me. ask me. if you're short on time for marketing constant contact's powerful tools can help. you can automate email and sms messages so customers get the right message at the right time.

save time marketing with constant contact. because all it takes is 30 seconds to make someone's day. get started today at constantcontact.com. helping the small stand tall. >> let's talk a moment about the background of yourself, when you grow up and how you came to this business. when you grow up? >> i grew up in chapel, new york. >> did you say i want to be a hedge fund investor? >> no. i wanted to be a businessman. that's probably what i told him at age 10 or something like

this. i always had all kinds of entrepreneurial jobs and things like this. >> did you have any newspaper about if you like that? because my dad did not believe in allowances. he said if you want money, you need to work. the heavy dig a ditch to help deal with water flow of our property. he offered to pay me a dollar an hour or something like this and it was a good lesson, i did not want to get paid per hour or so next time you give let me price the project and then it doesn't matter how quickly i get done. i don't want to be paid on an hourly basis. those are some of the early things. i would not call them entrepreneurial but they generated some money -- spending money. in terms of early life job appearances. one of the most valuable ones was actually when i was a harvard student. there is something called the

let's go travel guys. these books that students wrote about budget travel. and a friend of mine he sold advertising for those guys all around the world. we were working out of a basement dorm room. we got a commission for doing so. got a 15% promotion for selling advertising. quincy did really well in harvard. >> i graduated and then worked for my dad. my grandfather and his brother started a firm for rate financing real estate calibers. what you might call commercial mortgage brokers. which also raised equity financing for developers. so property and then i went to work there. i started -- spent a little under two years there before going to business school. >> and he went to business school for harvard?

>> that is when i started a hedge fund. >> you said i am out of harvard business school, i don't need any more experience, and is going to start hedge fund? >> yes. i started investing in business school with a classmate. i went to harvard with a plan to learn about investing so i could one day be an investor and there were no courses on investing in harvard but there were courses on finance and accounting and competitive strategy with michael porter. it was the backdrop for my education. i said i'll open a brokerage account and a little money in my real estate commissions. if i lose it all, it is another year before business school. if i learn something from it, may beat his career. i fell in love with investing and it is something you can kinda figure out with your -- if you're good at it -- >> i started a firm called gotham partners with david berkowitz.

business school started in september of 92. and yes, we had no experience. no was interesting is none of the people who knew me in high school, parents of my friends had no interest because they thought of me as a kid but we raised money for mostly people who were themselves good investors. i think they could see in us some potential. quincy transformed that into pershing square a year or two later. >> no. gotham was a decade and we did kind of public equity and private equity and some venture capital. it was actually pretty challenging. . quincy is specialized in picking stocks. were you a stock picker buster mark >> yes. we were kind of an activist stock picker. we would buy pretty concentrated

portfolio -- large stakes in companies that we thought were great businesses or had great assets but were under managed. >> when you are a activist, i would has different meanings in different people. would you call the ceo and say we owe him 5%? we got to be on the board? i to tell you how to run your company? question it is not exactly what we said because we were young and inexperienced but it was more that we would find a company -- one of the early investments was wendy's. the hamburger chain. wendy's owned 100% of a chain called tim hortons in canada. it was a very you are franchise. you can see that business was worth about $5 billion at least another 450 million of operating income. you can buy all of wendy's for 5 billion. the market was describing zero value to the windows franchise and our advice to the ceo was just been off tim hortons. then on fixing wendy's but you can create enormous value.

it was a bit like investment banking where we did not charge a fee and back then because we cannot get a return phone call because we were a tiny little fund, circa 2004, we hired blackstone which had an investment bank at the time and we hired them to say we put together a fairness opinion. then we wrote a letter to the board. we attached the blackstone valuation which was nearly double where the stock was trading. what you do that with other companies and being an activist, was it consistently your personality to do this? you have to call of ceos and say i have a better idea about how to run your company than you do. question is to sit my personality. i've always been a bit of an activist. >> when you are -- no one knows

who you are and you are trying to effect change in a company, you have to sort of being activist -- be an activist. you have to use the platform to sometimes chain the company into doing everything. 20 years later, having had a meaningful number of successful engagements with companies, we don't really have to do that anymore. a lot of stuff we done recently has been either bite into a company that already has great leadership and we are happy to share ideas -- in some cases there needs to be a change in leadership but we are able to get things done without what you might call activism. like engaged owners of businesses. >> you have three extremely successful acrobats. during the time. of the housing crisis. you did one during the covid time which i think was maybe your best investment ever.

bequest we bet that the credit spreads would widen because we have set on the global economy. that's basically what happens. quit people say do you have a more deals like that one when you did that one? >> yes. >> those are hard to find. question three black swan events in the last 20 years we have been able to be making big profitable that's on. these black swan type things hopefully only occur every seven years. >> interest rates went up and you made another macro back there that was very successful. you have any other macro bets you can mention now? >> we have another one on as we speak. we are betting that the federal reserve will have to cut rates more quickly than people expect. that is the current macro that we have. >> we will continue to be involved in this issue and put

harvard into what you think they should be doing. >> i am an activist but my activism today is probably not any corporate boardroom. it is on campus. this is our future, ma. godaddy airo. creates a logo, website, even social posts... in minutes! -how? -a.i. (impressed) ay i like it! who wants to come see the future?! get your business online in minutes with godaddy airo

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♪♪ sandals jamaica sale is now on! with rates from $199 per person per night. visit sandals.com or call 1-800-sandals quick some hedge funds delegated the my decision for many people in the firm. you may call the final decisions yourself. because we have an 8% investment team. each idea was one that a two-person team will do a deep dive on. i would do less of a deep dive. i will read the public filings. i won't be the person that talks to former employees like that kind of thing. and then we talk about every idea and ultimately the team collectively we don't do things generally that we don't have collective buy-in on. at the end of the day i do pertain the ultimate veto and

ultimate decision on sizing. one big change i made in the last couple of years, i appointed a cio who has been with the firm for about 14 years. ryan is exceptional. he has taken a leadership role among that a person team. i use the word team often hear. >> what type of people would get a job here? you're looking for people that are really smart, driven, what does just what you look for when you interview people? was it depends on what role. people on the investment team -- generally have graduated top of their class at wharton. they went to work at carlisle. we like people that got private equity experience. we think that's the best background for what we do. we are private equity investors

investing in the private -- public markets and the temperament of a typical private equity person fits well here. we only really on eight companies. then a change that often. this is not a place where atypical hedge fund firm -- people are cycling through the idea of the week, the idea of the month. here we may do one new idea of a year. >> one area where investors have been very invested in is artificial intelligence. are you invested in things related to artificial intelligence? ? direct investment. we are a small shareholder alphabet. we have a large investment in the business. it was a i. microsoft and openai had a very powerful demonstration of how to launch a new product and then google plus kind of launch, it

was a bit of a disaster. the stock had crossed on the base that fear is that google is way behind on air and you have whatever they were doing in ai if you will for free. in a review based on work we have done, actually google's neck and neck is not ahead of openai in terms of their business progress perk up >> you do make a fair amount of money and then you have the opportunity to be a philanthropist perk up why did you do that? why did you commit to giving away half of your network -- net worth? >> that was my plan anyway and then one day born buffet because up and says bill i want you to sign the giving pledge perk up i think it is -- i learned a lot about philanthropy. that is something from 17 years ago. my personal business plan was always to be super successful.

and then take the resources i don't need and read up them in a way that i thought was best for society. i think philanthropy is often not the best way to solve problems. i think capitalism and for-profit business models are generally the best way to solve problems but there are still problems, societal once that can't be solved in the traditional capital markets. there is sort of a gap. those are the areas we tend to focus on. >> one of the institutions you've been very philanthropic with is your alma mater, harvard. but you've been very public about your criticism, the way harvard handled the events of october 7 and the aftermath. can you talk about that now westmark >> the first mention of a group of 34 harvard student clubs on the morning after october 7 was to put out a statement saying israel was 100% responsible for the acts of hamas. my view on that was that is

ridiculous and that is more than ridiculous i would say. these students need to have some judgment and perspective. you can come out and say i am very unhappy about israel plus treatment of the palestinians in the west bank or you can talk about the gaza strip but you can support terrorists. giggly terrorists that rape, pillage and murder and burn and take hostages. my first point there was nothing muster affected and harvard but love no, actually got a text from a.c.l. in my industry and they said bill you know they people at harvard. i would like to know the students behind these clubs so i don't in the brantley hire them. i tweeted out and made that point and caught a bit of a firestorm.

it said why are you picking on students? i say you can't hide behind a corporate entity if you're going to support terrorism. and there were protests on campus. the protests weren't -- they were supportive of terrorism and supportive of things like when you have a group of students shouting intifada let's free palestine from the river to the sea. the meaning means to kill jesus. when i raised this issue harbors that we have a commitment to free speech and that is why we have to allow this. there is certain to be as that is certainly permissible under the first amendment and then there is or is speech that i would say is undesirable on a campus perk up -- campus. >> i haven't made any statements

about economic support for harvard. i went -- i don't want harvard to do the right thing. i don't want to threaten one way or another. that is not my approach. i think harvey does need to do a deep examination. one there has been a meaningful rise in antisemitic rhetoric on campuses. the reaction was let's form a task force and i think had this been another ethnic group where this kind of activity took place, harvard would be. >> you are going to continue to be involved in this issue. >> absolutely. i wrote a pretty thoughtful letter. 25 million people saw it on twitter and remarkably i did not get a response. to me that is a very bad and weak approach.

no response. no dear bill i hear what you're saying. nothing. yes, i am an activist but my activism today is probably not in the corporate boardroom. it is on campus. this is not just a harvard problem. it is and nyu problem. it is a university of pennsylvania problem. the more i examine the issue, the more woke, the more left-leaning the institution, the more anti-semitism. that is an unfortunate thing. question about this to a very successful hedge fund. what are you most proud of having achieved in your life so far? >> a number of things. i love having a company where i believe everyone here is excited to come to work every day. i think we've made a meaningful

contribution to the capitalist system and the functioning of how -- i think the most significant impact we've had -- we were sort of an early activist and as you probably know the nature of boardrooms 20 years ago is meaningfully different today. have a part of that is the rise of shareholder activism. i think that led to the u.s. capital markets be one of the best performing orchids in the world. it has an impact on people's pensions and people's livelihoods, people's competitiveness, our national security. i think the good news about my day job is it is fun, profitable and benefits are investors but also benefits the market generally. i think that is an important and do contribution. philanthropic lay we have invested 600 odd million dollars in a wide range of initiatives

and a number of those -- it is a bit like investing. hopefully you have a few googles and we have a couple of those numbers philanthropic lay. after that we've invested money. thanks to avalara, we can calculate sales tax automatically. avalarahhhhhh what if tax rates change? ahhhhhh filing sales tax returns? ahhhhhh business license guidance? ahhhhhh -cross-border sales? -ahhhhhh -item classification? -ahhhhhh does it connect with acc...? ahhhhhh ahhhhhh ahhhhhh