Billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman postponed Monday’s highly-anticipated public offering for Pershing Square USA – after failing to “raise the money” he was seeking, The Post has learned.
The closed-end fund was expected to raise between $2.5 billion to $4 billion, but has now been delayed until an as-yet unannounced date, according to a notice on the New York Stock Exchange’s website on Friday.
“Bill could not raise more than the $1 billion he got from friends,” a source directly involved in the IPO told The Post on Friday.
The IPO was initially set to price on Monday before trading the next day.
“People want to see where it trades first before investing,” the source said.
Ackman did not comment.
The delay comes a day after he filed an update with the SEC that included a letter Ackman penned to shareholders in his Pershing Square Capital Management firm asking them to back the new investment venture.
The Harvard graduate – who has become a fixture on social media with posts about the rampant antisemitism on college campuses – told shareholders they should get involved in the IPO “the sooner the better” to “improve the strength” of the deal.
“He doesn’t want a subscale listing,” the source said, “99% of companies like this trade at a discount to net asset value and he thought because of his public persona he would buck the trend but he didn’t.”
Ackman’s fund has returned 16.5% a year.
The 58-year-old – who has a net worth of $9.1 billion, according to Forbes and endorsed former President Donald Trump soon after he was shot – recently sold a stake in the firm that valued it at more than $10 billion.
