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Chipotle Mexican Grill sold by Pershing Square Capital Mgmt: $185.29m-Feb 6-7
In 2004, with $54 million in funding from his personal funds and former business partner Leucadia National, Ackman started Pershing Square Capital Management. Ackman has been known to hire people outside of traditional finance backgrounds; for instance, his professionals have included a former fly fishing guide, a former tennis pro, and "a man whom he met in a cab." In October 2014, Ackman launched a UK-based closed-end fund, Pershing Square Holdings, on the London Stock Exchange. Pershing has launched activist campaigns against McDonald's, Wendy's, and Herbalife. In 2005, Pershing bought a significant share in fast food chain Wendy's International and successfully pressured them to sell its Tim Horton's doughnut chain. Wendy's spun off the Canadian restaurant donut chain through an IPO in 2006 and raised $670 million for Wendy's investors. After Ackman sold his shares at a substantial profit after a dispute over executive succession, the stock price collapsed, raising criticism that the sale of Wendy's fastest growing unit left the company in a weaker market position. Ackman blamed the poor performance on their new CEO.
In December 2007, his funds owned a 10% stake in Target Corporation, valued at $4.2 billion through the purchase of stock and derivatives. His funds now own a 7.8% stake. In December 2010, his funds held a 38% stake in Borders Group and on December 6, 2010, Ackman indicated he would finance a buyout of Barnes & Noble for US$900M. On January 9, 2009, the fund disclosed a 7.4% ownership stake in General Growth Properties (GGP) according to documents filed with the SEC, becoming the second-largest shareholder behind Brookfield Asset Management. The fund was betting on the company to go bankrupt in a way that would leave its shareholders intact. In November 2010, Pershing Square helped the company emerge from Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. As of August 2012 the fund holds beneficial ownership of 7.7 percent of General Growth's stock.
In 2010, Pershing Square reported having taken large ownership stakes in JC Penney and Canadian Pacific Railway. In July 2012, Ackman acknowledged to CNBC that he had acquired shares in Procter & Gamble worth approximately $1.8 billion, a 1% stake in the company, with the idea of taking an activist role within the corporation. Pershing Square later reduced its stake in Procter & Gamble, which was valued at around $60 million by the end of 2013. In the first quarter of 2016, the hedge fund experienced its "biggest-ever quarterly loss" of 25%, due in part to its 9% stake in Valeant Pharmaceuticals International. Ackman, who joined Valeant's board in March 2016, commented on the company's 88% loss since August 2015 stating, “This is going to be a badly scraped knee that may even require stitches but it is not life threatening… We should be able to recover the lion's share of our investment—if not all of it—over time". After the controversial drug prices and operations of Valeant became public, Ackman and Valeant's board fired former CEO Mike Pearson, and Pershing Square sold all of its stake in Valeant with a total loss of $4bn. In September 2016, Pershing Square continued its investment in fast food by buying a 9.9% stake in Chipotle Mexican Grill. As of March 2018, Pershing Square held a 10.3% stake in Chipotle. In 2018, Ackman dumped $500 million into the publicly traded arm of Pershing Square Capital Management stating it was significantly undervalued at roughly $15 a share. As of September 2019, the fund returned 54.5% with a share price of $19.10, the highest since January 2016.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pershing_Square_Capital_Management
https://www.finviz.com/insidertrading.ashx?oc=1336528&tc=7&b=2
Peter Thiel sold Facebook: $11.28m-feb6
PayPal cofounder Peter Thiel became a venture capitalist and early investor in Facebook.
He also cofounded CIA-backed big data startup Palantir, recently valued at around $20 billion.
Peter Andreas Thiel is an American entrepreneur and venture capitalist. He is a co-founder of PayPal, Palantir Technologies and Founders Fund. He was ranked No. 4 on the Forbes Midas List of 2014, with a net worth of $2.2 billion, and No. 328 on the Forbes 400 in 2018, with a net worth of $2.5 billion. Thiel was born in Frankfurt. He moved with his family to the United States as an infant, and spent a portion of his upbringing in Southern Africa before the family settled in California in 1977. He studied philosophy at Stanford University, graduating with a B.A. in 1989. He then went on to the Stanford Law School, and received his J.D. in 1992. After graduation, he worked as a judicial clerk for Judge James Larry Edmondson, a securities lawyer for Sullivan & Cromwell, a speechwriter for former-U.S. Secretary of Education William Bennett and as a derivatives trader at Credit Suisse prior to founding Thiel Capital in 1996. He co-founded PayPal in 1999, serving as chief executive officer until its sale to eBay in 2002 for $1.5 billion.
After the sale of PayPal, he founded Clarium Capital, a global macro hedge fund. He launched Palantir Technologies, a big data analysis company, in 2004 and continues to serve as its chairman as of 2019. His Founders Fund, a venture capital firm, was launched in 2005 along with PayPal partners Ken Howery and Luke Nosek. Earlier, Thiel became Facebook's first outside investor when he acquired a 10.2% stake for $500,000 in August 2004. He sold the majority of his shares in Facebook for over $1 billion in 2012, but remains on the board of directors. He also co-founded Valar Ventures in 2010, co-founded Mithril Capital, of which he is investment committee chair, in 2012, and served as a partner at Y Combinator from 2015 to 2017.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Thiel
Jan 28 2020
iPod inventor, Thiel Capital among backers of battery company Advano in new funding
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/28/ipod-inventor-thiel-capital-among-backers-of-battery-company-advano-in-new-funding.html
https://www.finviz.com/insidertrading.ashx?oc=1211060&tc=7&b=2
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