William Albert Ackman (born May 11, 1966) is an American billionaire investor and hedge fund manager. He is the founder and CEO of Pershing Square Capital Management, a hedge fund management company. His investment approach makes him an activist investor. , Ackman's net worth was estimated at $3.4 billion by Forbes. Early life and education Ackman was raised in Chappaqua, New York, the son of Ronnie I. (née Posner) and Lawrence David Ackman, the former chairman of a New York real estate financing firm, Ackman-Ziff Real Estate Group. He is of Ashkenazi Jewish descent. In 1988, he received a Bachelor of Arts degree magna cum laude in Social Studies from Harvard College. His thesis was "Scaling the Ivy Wall: the Jewish and Asian American Experience in Harvard Admissions." In 1992, he received an MBA from Harvard Business School. Career Gotham Partners In 1992, Ackman founded the investment firm Gotham Partners with fellow Harvard graduate David P. Berkowitz. The firm made small investments in public companies. In 1995, Ackman partnered with the insurance and real estate firm Leucadia National to bid for Rockefeller Center. Although they did not win the deal, the bid generated interest in Gotham from investors: three years later, Gotham had $500 million in assets under management (AUM). By 2002, Gotham had become entrenched in litigation with various external shareholders who also owned an interest in the companies in which Gotham invested. In 2002 Ackman researched MBIA in order to challenge Standard & Poor's AAA rating of its bonds. He was charged fees for copying 725,000 pages of statements regarding the financial services company as part of his law firm's compliance with a subpoena. Ackman called for a division between MBIA's structured finance business and its municipal bond insurance business. He argued that MBIA was legally restricted from trading billions of dollars of credit default swap (CDS) protection that MBIA had sold against various mortgage-backed collateralized debt obligations (CDOs), and was using a second corporation, LaCrosse Financial Products, which MBIA described as an "orphaned transformer." Ackman bought credit default swaps against MBIA corporate debt and sold them for a large profit during the financial crisis of 2007–2008. He reported covering his short position on MBIA on January 16, 2009, according to the 13D filed with the SEC. In 2003, a feud developed between Ackman and Carl Icahn over a deal involving Hallwood Realty. They agreed to a "shmuck