Bill Ackman

Ackman is a concentrated, long-hold, activist investor. He typically owns 5–10 positions at a time — sometimes fewer.

Each one involves exhaustive research. If he's buying, he has usually already built a 100-slide deck explaining exactly what's wrong with the company and exactly what needs to change to fix it.

His style is the opposite of index investing. He wants a controlling voice at the table.

He wants to talk to the CEO. He wants the board to change.

That's the "activist" part — he's not just buying a stock and hoping it goes up. He's buying it with a plan to force the thing that will make it go up.

The strategy works until it doesn't. When the thesis is right, he wins massively.

When the thesis is wrong and he's also very public about it, the losses are spectacular.

Vikas Oberoi

Vikas Oberoi concentrates capital ruthlessly. He focuses on a small number of premium micro-markets in Mumbai, builds the highest-quality product possible in each, and refuses to chase volume.

He has said no to more deals than he has said yes to — and that selectivity is his biggest competitive advantage.

Bill Ackman

Ackman's core belief is that markets frequently misprice assets when the story around them is either too negative or too complicated. He looks for businesses he can understand deeply, with a gap between what the market thinks they're worth and what he thinks they're worth.

He's talked extensively about asymmetric bets — situations where you can be wrong and lose a small amount, but right and make a lot. He believes activist investing works because most company boards are too comfortable and most CEOs have too little accountability.

He thinks public pressure, when backed by real analysis, is a legitimate tool for creating value. Whether that makes him a hero or a villain depends on which company you ask.

Vikas Oberoi

Quality is the cheapest long-term strategy. A premium product in the right location never needs to discount, never needs aggressive sales tactics, and builds its own demand through reputation.

Bill Ackman

Ackman runs highly concentrated books and uses leverage. That's the opposite of conservative.

He'll put 20–30% of the fund in a single position if he believes in it. He also uses options and credit derivatives — his March 2020 COVID hedge was built using credit default swaps, instruments most retail investors have never heard of.

He famously described his risk approach as: "I only invest when the downside is zero and the upside is unlimited" — which sounds great until you lose $4 billion on one trade. The honest version is: he's a high-conviction investor with a high tolerance for pain on the way to being right.

Vikas Oberoi

Lower than most developers in his peer group. Oberoi Realty carries minimal debt relative to its asset base, avoids pre-launch sales pressure, and does not stretch into unfamiliar markets.

The trade-off is slower growth, but the downside protection is exceptional.

Bill Ackman

Ackman has a taste for the finer things and doesn't pretend otherwise. He owns a large Manhattan apartment, he's been photographed at high-end charity events, and his social circle overlaps with New York media, finance, and political elite.

He and his second wife, Neri Oxman, have a high public profile — she's a former MIT professor and design pioneer. He is a Harvard alumnus, twice over, and gave to the school for years, though the relationship became famously strained in 2023 when he led a very public campaign against Harvard's president over campus antisemitism, ultimately contributing to her resignation.

He is not a guy who stays quiet about anything.

Vikas Oberoi

Conservative on leverage, aggressive on product quality. Oberoi famously invests heavily in finishing quality — materials, lobbies, landscaping — where competitors cut back.

The premium pricing fully absorbs that extra cost and then some.

Bill Ackman

The COVID hedge in March 2020 is the one. As markets started selling off in late February, Ackman quietly spent $27 million buying credit default swaps — basically insurance on corporate bonds defaulting if the economy collapsed.

He then went on CNBC on March 18, 2020, visibly emotional, and said "hell is coming." The market kept dropping. Three weeks later, he unwound the trade.

The $27 million had turned into $2.6 billion. That's roughly a 100x return in under a month.

He used the proceeds to buy stocks at the market bottom. He then made another fortune as markets recovered.

The whole sequence — hedge, cry on TV, buy the dip, profit — is one of the more remarkable individual trade sequences in recent hedge fund history.

Vikas Oberoi

Oberoi Garden City, Goregaon. Transforming a stretch of land in Mumbai's western suburbs into an integrated development that now includes luxury residential towers, two commercial office towers (Commerz I and II), the Westin hotel and Oberoi Mall.

Goldman Sachs runs its Indian operations from Commerz. That is the definition of value creation.

Bill Ackman

The Valeant Pharmaceuticals disaster is the one. Ackman built a massive position in Valeant starting in 2015, eventually owning about $4 billion worth of shares.

His thesis was that Valeant's model — aggressively raising drug prices and cutting R&D — was brilliant. Congress, journalists, and eventually the SEC had a different view.

The stock collapsed from $260 to under $10. Ackman spent months publicly defending the position, appearing on CNBC repeatedly to explain why it would recover.

It didn't. He finally sold in 2017 at a loss of approximately $4 billion.

It's the most expensive public loss in hedge fund activism history. The lesson he's cited: don't get emotionally attached to a position, and be faster to recognize when the fundamental thesis has broken.

Vikas Oberoi

Moving slowly into the Worli and South Mumbai luxury market. Competitors like Lodha and Piramal Realty captured the ultra-prime segment while Oberoi was consolidating in Goregaon.

The Sky City launch in Worli is a course correction, but it came years after the market window first opened.

Bill Ackman

Bill Ackman grew up in Chappaqua, New York, the son of a real estate finance chairman. He was a history major at Harvard — class of 1988 — then went straight to Harvard Business School.

His first venture was Gotham Partners, a real estate and value investing fund he started in 1992 with a Harvard classmate. It was a disaster.

The fund made concentrated bets on illiquid real estate and had to be wound down by 2003 under serious investor pressure and SEC scrutiny.

He didn't quit. In 2004 he launched Pershing Square Capital Management, this time with a clearer focus: take large stakes in companies, go public with his thesis, and use activist pressure to force management changes.

The approach worked. His reputation was built on detailed, public investment presentations — sometimes running 100+ slides — that became must-reads on Wall Street.

He turned activist investing into something that felt more like journalism than finance: research a company, find what's broken, publish everything, and bet heavily on being right.

Vikas Oberoi

[ "Took Oberoi Realty public on BSE and NSE in October 2010 — the first luxury-focused real estate IPO in India", "Developed Oberoi Garden City in Goregaon, a 100-acre integrated development with residential, commercial, hotel and retail components", "Built Commerz commercial towers in Goregaon, housing offices for Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and other multinationals", "Delivered Oberoi Exquisite and Oberoi Esquire — among Mumbai's most sought-after luxury residential towers", "Expanded into Worli with ultra-luxury Sky City project, targeting the top 1% of Mumbai buyers", "Oberoi Realty's market cap crossed ₹40,000 crore by 2024, making it one of India's most valuable listed real estate firms", "Maintained a near-zero legacy debt posture through disciplined balance sheet management" ]

Bill Ackman

Pershing Square Capital Management is his flagship hedge fund, managing around $16 billion. His most famous public positions have included Canadian Pacific Railway, where he pushed successfully for a new CEO and a turnaround that made Pershing Square hundreds of millions.

He held a massive position in Valeant Pharmaceuticals from 2015 to 2017 — which will come up again. He took a huge bet on General Growth Properties during the 2008 financial crisis when no one else would touch it.

That one returned over $1 billion.

He has also done business on the other side: Pershing Square Holdings is his publicly listed vehicle on Euronext Amsterdam, which lets retail investors access his fund — unusual for a hedge fund of this size. He's been a major Burger King and Restaurant Brands International investor, and he backed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac preferred shares in a long-running legal battle with the government.

Vikas Oberoi

[ {"name": "Oberoi Realty", "role": "Chairman and Managing Director", "year": 1998, "description": "India's leading luxury real estate developer, listed on BSE and NSE (ticker: OBEROI), with projects concentrated in Mumbai"}, {"name": "Oberoi Mall", "role": "Developer and Owner", "year": 2008, "description": "Premium mall in Goregaon, Mumbai, anchored by luxury brands and part of the Oberoi Garden City integrated development"} ]

Bill Ackman

Harvard College, BA in History, 1988. Harvard Business School, MBA, 1992.

He's been a major Harvard donor — and major Harvard critic — throughout his career. The irony of his most public fight being with his own alma mater was not lost on anyone.

Vikas Oberoi

Commerce graduate from the University of Mumbai. Learned the real estate business from the ground up within the family enterprise before taking charge of operations.