Pershing Square Capital Management’s founder and CEO William Ackman is notorious for his headline-making activist investments. In 2002 he released a report as co-head of Gotham Partners challenging the credibility of Armonk, NY-based Municipal Bond Insurance Association’s (MBIA) triple-A rating, ultimately taking a large short position through credit default swaps against MBIA corporate debt. When MBIA crashed in 2008, Ackman made $1 billion for Pershing Square’s investors. Getting there was painful: It took five years for him to be proven right, and his controversial bet cost him investors and even landed him in the crosshairs of then-New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer...
