저자: BillAckman · 외국인
요약 보기
빌 애크먼이 자신의 최대 실패인 밸리언트 파마슈티컬스 투자 손실(약 40억 달러)을 회고. 핵심 원인은 핵심 원칙 이탈, 이사회 참여, 경영진 신뢰 붕괴. 이후 이혼·소송·공매도 공격 등 개인적 위기를 겪었고, 차입 300M달러와 상장 보유사 지분 매입으로 반등. 원칙을 돌에 새겨 되새기며 이후 6년간 최고 성과를 냈다고 설명. 과거 회고로 향후 자산 가격 예측 발언은 없음.
다듬은 글
So, we talked about some of the some of the big wins and your track record, but you said there were some big losses. So, what what what's uh what's the biggest loss of your career? Biggest loss of my career is a company called Valeant Pharmaceuticals. We made an investment in a business that didn't meet our core principles.
Uh the problem with the pharmaceutical industry, and there are many problems as I've learned, is it's a very volatile business, right? It's based on drug discovery. Uh it's based on, you know, predicting uh kind of the future revenues of a drug before it goes off patent. Um you know, lot lots of complexities, and we thought we had found it a a pharmaceutical company we could own because of a very unusual founder in the way he approached his business.
Um we it was a company where another activist was on the board of directors of the company and kind of governing and overseeing the day-to-day decisions, and we ended up making a passive investment in the company. And up until this point in time, we really didn't make passive investments. And the company made a series of decisions that were, you know, disastrous.
And then we stepped in to try to solve the problem. It was the first time I ever joined a board, and the mess was much larger than I realized from the outside, and then I was kind of stuck. And it was a very much a confidence-sensitive strategy cuz they they built their business by acquiring pharmaceutical assets, and they often issued stock when they acquired uh targets.
And so, once the market lost confidence in management, the stock price got crushed and it impaired their ability to continue to acquire low-cost, you know, drugs. And um we lost $4 billion. $4 billion. Yeah. How's that for a big loss? That's Tough there. I'm sweating this whole conversation, both the wins and the losses and the stakes involved.
And by the way, that that loss catalyzed m- other what I'd call mark-to-market losses. So, very high-profile, huge number, disastrous press. Uh then people said, "Okay, Bill's going to go out of business. So, we're going to bet against everything he's doing. And we know his entire portfolio cuz we only own 10 things." And we were short a company called Herbalife.
Um, very famously, we've only really shorted two companies. The first one, there's a book. The second one, there's a movie. We no longer short companies, but uh, so people pushed up the price of Herbalife, um, which is when you're a short seller, that's catastrophic. I can explain that. And then they also shorted the other stocks that we owned.
And so, that Valeant loss led to an overall more than 30% loss in the value of our portfolio. The Valeant loss was real and we was crystallized. We ended up selling the position, taking that loss. Most of the other losses were what I would call marked-to-market losses. They were temporary. But, many people go out of business because, as I mentioned before, large move in a price if investors are redeeming or you have leverage, you know, could put you out of business.
And if and people assumed if we got put out of business, we'd have to sell everything or cover our short position. And that would make the losses even worse. So, Wall Street is kind of ruthless. So, they can make money off of that whole thing. Absolutely. So, they used the opportunity of Valeant to try to destroy you Yes.
uh, reputation, financially, and then capitalize on the Yes. make money off of that. Yes. Well, that's a terrifying spot to be in. What what was it like going through that? It was pretty grim. Uh, it was uh, it's actually much worse than that. Because I had a lot of stuff going on personally as well.
So, and these things tend to be correlated. The Valeant mistake came at a time where I was contemplating my marriage. Uh, and uh, I was also we had, you know, the problem with the hedge fund business is when you get to a certain scale, the CEO becomes like the chief marketing officer of the business.
And I'm really an investor as opposed to a marketing guy. Um, but when you have investors who give you a few hundred million dollars, they want to see you, you know, once a year, Bill, I'd love to see you for an hour. But if you got a couple hundred of those, you find yourself on a plane to the Middle East, to Asia, uh flying around the country.
This was pre-Zoom. Uh and uh that takes you away from the investment process. You have to delegate more. That was a contributor to the Valeant mistake. So, now we lose a ton of money on Valeant. My ex-wife and I were, you know, talking about separating, getting divorced. I put that on hold cuz I, you know, I didn't want to make a decision in the middle of this crisis.
And things just kept getting worse. We were also sued. When you lose a lot of money, we didn't get sued by our investors, but we got sued by a shareholder because when the stock price goes down, shareholders sue. We'd done nothing wrong other than make a big mistake, but, you know, so you have litigation.
Uh your investors are taking their money out. Um I'm in the middle of a divorce. Uh the divorce starts to proceed. Um my my ex-wife's lawyer's expectations of what my net worth was was about three times what it actually was. And it was going lower right in the middle of this. And I I remember the lawyer saying, uh "Look, Bill, you know, you know, we we estimate your net worth at X, but don't worry, we only want a third." But X was 3X, so a third was 100%.
And um and then we had I had litigation. Uh and actually never before publicly disclosed, and I'll share it with you now. Um we had a a public company that owned uh about a third of our portfolio that was called our version of Berkshire Hathaway. I tried to, you know, learn from Mr. Buffett over time, and it was, so to speak, permanent capital.
The beauty of problem with hedge funds is people can take their money out every quarter. Um what Buffett has is a company where people want to take their money out, they sell the stock, but the money stays. So, we set up a similar structure in October of 2014. And then a year later Valeant happens. And then a year later we're in the middle of the mess.
And we're still in the mess. You know, like by kind of mid uh 2017, we've got litigation underway. Uh and a another activist investor, a firm called Elliott Associates, which is uh run by a guy named Paul Singer, took a big position in our public company. That was the bulk of our capital. And they shorted all the stocks that we owned, and they went long on the short.
Probably the short that we were short. And they were making a bet that we'd be forced to liquidate. And then they would make money on, you know, our public company was trading at a discount to what all the securities were worth. So, they bought the they bought the public company, they shorted the securities.
And then they, you know, came to see us and to try to, you know, be activist and force us to liquidate. And uh that sort of Oh, wow. thought this was going to be Wow. I I would I envisioned an end where the divorce takes all of my resources, the permanent capital vehicle ends up getting liquidated, and another activist in my industry puts me out of business.
And I had met uh Neri Oxman right around this time. And I'd fallen completely in love with her. And I was envisioning a world where I was bankrupt, a judge found me guilty of, you know, whatever. You know, he sends me off to jail. Or not that judge, cuz he was a civil judge, but another judge sues the SEC, Department of Justice.
And I find myself in this incredible mess. Uh and I decided I didn't want things to end that way. So, I uh I did something I'd never done before. I I talked to all before about you don't borrow money. I borrowed money. And I borrowed $300 million uh uh from uh JP Morgan in the middle of this mess. And uh I give JP Morgan enormous credit in seeing through it.
Um and also uh you know, I'd been a a uh good client over a long period of time, and it's like a, you know, it's a handshake bank. And they bet that I would succeed. And I took that money to buy enough stock in my public company that I could prevent an activist from taking over and effectively buy control of our little public company.
And I got that done. And that I knew was the moment, the turning point. And uh I resolved my divorce, and divorces get easier to resolve when things are going badly. I was able to resolve that. We settled the litigation. I was buying blocks of our stock in the market. I remember a day I bought a big block of stock in the market.
I get a call from Gordon Singer, who's Paul Singer's son, who runs their uh London part of their business. He's like, "Bill, was that you buying that block?" I said, "Yes." He's like, "Fuck." So, he knew He knew that once I got that, they were not going to be able to succeed, and they went away. And that that was the bottom.
Uh and then I I we've had an incredible run since then. And there you were able to protect your reputation from the Valiant uh failure still? I mean, you know, this is a business where you're going to make some mistakes. It was a big one. It was very reputationally damaging. Uh the press was a total disaster.
Uh but I'm not a quitter, and actually the the key moments for us uh we'd never taken our core investment principles and actually really written them down. Something we talked about at meetings. Uh investor you know, kind of our investment team meetings. I had a member of the team I said, "Look, go find a big piece of granite and a chisel.
And let's take those core principles. I want them like Moses' 10 Commandments. Okay, we're going to chisel them and then we're going to put it up on the wall." And once we produce those, we put one on everyone's desk. I said, "Look, if we ever again veer from the core principles, you know, hit me there with a baseball bat." Yeah.
And that was the bottom. And ever since then we've done we've had the best 6 years in the history of the firm. So, refocus on the fundamentals. That's a hell of a story. helps. I I literally met Neri at the absolute bottom. We I Our first date was September 7th of 2017. That was very close to the bottom.
Actually, there's one other element to the story. So, this went on for a few months after I met her. The other element is that one day I get a call from Neri. She's like, "Bill, guess what?" I'm like, "What?" "Brad Pitt is coming to the Media Lab. He wants to see my work." I'm like, "That's beautiful, sweetheart.
I didn't know Brad Pitt was interested in in your work." As a man, that's a difficult phone call to take. he's really interested in architecture. Okay. Um now, Neri and I were like, you know, we would WhatsApp all day, every day. We'd talk throughout the day. Uh Brad Pitt shows up at the Media Lab at 10:00.
I you know, talked to her in the morning. I kind of text her to see how things are going. Don't hear back. And on WhatsApp, you can see like whether the other person's read it or not. Okay? No response. Yeah. Couple hours later, send her another text. No response. 6:00, no response. 8:00, no response.
10:00, no response. And you know, Yeah. she finally calls me at 10:30, tells me how great Brad Pitt is. Yeah. So, I had this scenario, okay, I'm going to a judge is going to find me we're going to lose to the judge. Uh all my assets will disappear. And then Brad Pitt's going to take my girlfriend. Yeah.
Brad Pitt's your competition. This is great. So, it was like a moment. That was sort of the bottom. And then sort of, you know, the motivational thing. I didn't want to lose to an activist. Didn't want to lose my girl to some other guy. So. Brad Pitt, and you emerge from all of that the winner on all fronts.
I'm a very fortunate guy. Very fortunate and lucky. You talked about some of the technical aspects of that, but psychologically, just is there uh Like, what are you doing at night by yourself? That was a hard time. Hard time cuz I was separated from my wife and my kids. Uh I was living in, you know, not the greatest apartment.
Uh Uh, you know, you know, I had a beautiful home and so I had to go find like a bachelor place. And I was I didn't want to be away from my kids. I I I moved like 10 blocks away and I wasn't seeing them and they didn't like it. So I ended up buying an apartment I didn't like uh, in the same building as my kids like with a different different entrance so I could be near them.
And I was home alone, I got a dog. That was a uh, Babar. We call him Babar the the elephant. Uh, he's a black Labradoodle. Nice. Uh, he was supposed to be a mini but he's not so as mini. Um, but I got him at 6 weeks old and he would keep me company. And I started meditating actually. Uh, and uh, a friend recommended um, TM.
And I would meditate 20 minutes in the morning, 20 minutes in the evening. And I also big believer in exercise and you know, weightlifting and I play tennis. And uh, I've I had been this is not my first you know, proximity to disaster. Uh, I had another moment uh, in my career like uh, you know, 2000 uh, two and I learned this method for dealing with these kind of moments which is uh, you just make a little progress every day.
So, today I'm going to wake up, I'm going to make progress. You know, I'll make progress in the litigation, I'll make progress in the portfolio, I'll make progress with my life. Uh, and progress compounds. A bit like money compounds. You don't see a lot of progress in the first few weeks but like 30 days in and like, "Oh, okay." You know, like you can't look up at the mountain top where you used to be.
Mhm. Cuz then you'll you'll give up, right? But you just okay, I'm just make step by step by step. Uh, and then 90 days in you're like, "Okay, I I was way down there. Okay, I'm the mountain Okay, I don't look up." Just keep making, you know, progress, progress, progress. And progress really does compound and and one day you wake up and like, "Wow, it's amazing how far I've come." And if you look at a chart of Pershing Square, our company, you know, you can see the absolute bottom.
Well, you can see where we were, you can see the drop, and you can see where we are now. And that huge drop that felt like the complete unbelievable disaster looks like a little bump uh on the curve. And uh it really gives you perspective on these things. You just have to power through. And I think the key is, you know, I've always been fortunate like from a mental health point of view.
And you know, nutrition, sleep, exercise, and a little progress every day. It's, you know, very That's it. And I, you know, good friends and family. You know, I had uh you know, go take a walk with a friend every night. Um you know, and you know, a sister who loves me and parents who were supportive.
But they were, you know, they were all worried about their their son, their brother, you know. It was It was a moment. And also, by the way, the other thing to think about is uh when you recover from something like this, you really appreciate it, you know. And uh and also the, you know, as much of the the media loves, okay, when some successful person falls.
They love writing the story of success. They love even more the story of failure. But when you recover from that, it's kind of like the American story. Yeah. Right? You know, America, you know, you think of the great entrepreneurs and how many failures they had before they succeeded. You know, how many rocket launches, you know, did SpaceX have explode on the pad, right? And then you look at success. I mean, that's why Musk is so admired.
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