Katie Baker in The Ringer:
The way the fabled investor Bill Ackman sees it, he was born to move markets. It’s right there in the name: BILL-ionaire ACK-tivist MAN, as the 59-year-old always loves pointing out, whether in a New York magazine profile (in which Ackman also asserted that “I’ve met people named Hamburger that own McDonald’s franchises”) or on the social media platform X (where Ackman has racked up 1.8 million followers since he joined in 2017 with a Chipotle tweet). As a billionaire, an activist, and a man, Ackman built his fortune and his reputation by offering decades’ worth of unsolicited and even unwanted advice. Most of it has been directed toward the various big stagnant corporations he always sought to improve or the stubborn nations he still hopes to influence. But recently, Ackman has attempted to proffer his offbeat wisdom to us smol bean, stick-in-the-mud civilians, too.
And more frequently, that wisdom has extended far beyond the field of finance.
“Just two cents from an older happily married guy concerned about our next generation’s happiness and population replacement rates,” Ackman posted this past weekend, using the same confident, conversational tone you might find in one of his hedge fund investor letters. “The online culture has destroyed the ability to spontaneously meet strangers. As such, I thought I would share a few words that I used in my youth to meet someone that I found compelling.”
More here.
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