Investor Bill Ackman is adding billions to his billions—at least on paper—as the value of his stake in hedge fund Pershing Square surges thanks to a newly increased valuation.
Pershing Square, which Ackman founded two decades ago, is raising $1.05 billion from a funding round valuing the firm at about $10.5 billion. The undisclosed buyers are set to acquire a 10% stake in the firm.
Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal reported that Pershing, which has about $16.3 billion in assets under management, is set to go public as early as 2025, which a person familiar with the matter confirmed to Fortune. But before then, its CEO, Ackman, will see a big boost to his net worth.
Ackman is believed to own nearly half of Pershing Square, and his net worth is valued at $4.3 billion, according to Forbes. The current Pershing funding round will boost this by more than $4 billion, the Financial Timesreported citing a person familiar with the matter. This means that Ackman’s fortune could climb to at least $8.3 billion.
The increased valuation would also make Pershing’s chief investment officer Ryan Israel a newly minted billionaire on paper, the FT reported.
The reported multibillion-dollar boost would propel Ackman up the list of the world’s richest people, putting him above notable executives such as Block’s Jack Dorsey, MicroStrategy’s Michael Saylor, and former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick, according to Forbes estimates. For now, Ackman is the 738th richest person in the world, according to the outlet.
Among hedge fund managers, Ackman is also one of the highest paid. Despite making few changes to the portfolio of stocks Pershing manages for clients, Ackman brought home $610 million last year, Bloomberg reported.
After gaining notoriety in the financial world as an activist investor in the early 2000s, Ackman stepped into the limelight during a failed five-year battle against supplements company Herbalife. Ackman pivoted Pershing two years ago to investing in bigger companies such as Chipotle and Alphabet.
Recently, Ackman has also attracted attention for his lengthy social media posts and pointed comments about anti-Semitism on college campuses and his anti-DEI tirades. When former president Donald Trump was convicted on 34 felony counts Thursday, the 58-year-old implied in a tweet that he agreed with right-wing Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis that the legal proceedings against Trump were politically biased. Trump was convicted unanimously on all the counts against him by 12 jurors in New York state court.
