Bill Ackman going Dutch for listing on Amsterdam’s Euronext exchange
Top hedge fund investor Bill Ackman has snubbed London in favour of Amsterdam to list his new $5bn (£3.1bn) investment vehicle.
Ackman, who runs one of America’s most active investors Pershing Square Capital, will list the fund on Amsterdam’s Euronext exchange after mulling a variety of places across Europe, including London.
The fund, Pershing Square Holdings (PSH), will issues shares at $25 each in a bid to raise $2bn. It already has about $2.9bn of additional cash invested in assets.
The firm said it had received $1.5bn of backing from 30 cornerstone investors. Pershing is using UBS and Deutsche Bank to raise the cash from investors.
Ackman called the listing a “transformational” event. “We expect that the public listing of PSH will substantially enhance the stability of our capital base, enabling us to invest a greater percentage of our assets in activist commitments on a long‐term basis, and improving our ability to take advantage of market dislocations when they arise.”
Ackman joins other alternative investors, such as KKR, which have also listed funds in Amsterdam.
Pershing Square, which was founded by Ackman in 2003, is a high profile activist investor and buys stakes in companies and tries to push for operational or strategic change.
Ackman led a long campaign against nutritional supplement Herbalife and has recently pushed for the sale of botox maker Allergan to Valeant Pharmaceuticals.
Ackman is raising the new fund to maintain a pool of liquidity and protect against the threat of customers pulling cash from his fund, which would cut off potential capital to invest.