저자: 미상 · 외국인
요약 보기
빌 애크먼의 Pershing Square USA는 성과보수(16~20%)를 뺀 저비용 폐쇄형 펀드로 2023년 IPO를 추진했으나 목표 250억달러에서 20억달러로 축소되는 등 부진했다. 영상은 기존 펀드 투자자 이탈(자기잠식) 문제와 수수료 민감도를 지적한다. 또한 폐쇄형 펀드와 ETF 구조 차이, 저비용 인덱스·테마 ETF의 확산을 설명한다. 애크먼의 강점으로 타이밍과 기업 개입 전략을 언급한다. 특정 종목의 향후 가격 방향에 대한 예측 발언은 없다.
다듬은 글
This is Bill Ackman. Bill Ackman— CEO of Pershing Square Capital Management. At Pershing Square Capital Management, Bill and his team invest the money of a variety of wealthy, ultra-wealthy, and incredibly wealthy clients. At last count, Pershing Square Capital had $18 billion under management . The funds are managed through so-called closed-end funds.
The largest of them, Pershing Square Holdings, is traded on the London Stock Exchange . If you're not sure what a closed-end fund is, let me explain. A closed-end fund is a type of investment fund that raises a fixed amount of capital through an initial public offering or subsequent capitalizations and then manages it.
They are often traded on the stock exchange like stocks. But unlike mutual or exchange- traded funds , closed-end funds have a set number of shares, do not issue or redeem them on a regular basis, and their market price may differ from the net asset value depending on the supply and demand for the shares themselves.
So Bill and his team at Pershing Square Capital manage the capital that investors put into these closed-end funds so that those investors can make money. And for this work, Pershing Square Capital receives a commission. Pershing Square's services cost investors 2% per year of the total amount of funds under management and 16 to 20% of the fund's profits.
They can set that price because they are doing really well . Ackman and his team always beat the index, and now Bill and Pershing Square are known as successful managers, although Bill has become famous for many other things lately. Now let's move on to 2023, when Pershing has developed a plan to enter the lucrative American retail market with its unique management style.
They called the new fund Pershing Square USA, and it was to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange as a closed-end fund managed by the same Pershing team that implements the successful strategy and manages other funds, but without the performance fee of 16-20% of profits. Pershing Square USA's presentation brought this to the forefront, demonstrating what returns Pershing funds would have shown over the past 10 years if Pershing Square Capital hadn't taken all those performance fees.
Pershing was even going to waive their 2% gross commission for the first year just to jump-start the process. Pershing Square USA tried to raise $25 billion in an IPO, but things didn't go too well. After limited interest, Pershing lowered the request to $2 billion. So, what's the matter? Well, according to Pershing, investors didn't understand why they weren't better off waiting until the IPO was complete to buy the shares later.
This is a completely reasonable idea. Closed-end investment funds typically trade at a discount to their net asset value. But this cannot be the only reason. Is n't there a more important point here? What about the closed-end fund that Pershing manages today? If Pershing Square USA planned to bring in the same team as Pershing Square Holdings to execute the same strategy, what do investors in the old fund get for their 16-20% performance fees?
It's funny to imagine how Bill realized this, calling all Pershing shareholders and offering them a closed-end fund, registered in New York, that does the same thing as the current fund, but with a much lower commission. And you can hear them say, " Of course, Bill. We look forward to transferring all the funds that you charge a success fee for into this new fund without such a fee." Bill, of course, probably feels like a telemarketer for the phone company trying to convince customers to change their plan.
But Bill Ekman is a man who understands numbers. He should have known that the same team, implementing the same strategy for a lower fee, would cannibalize the assets of an identical fund with higher fees. Maybe he didn't care. Perhaps he believes that making a profit in the next decade will be difficult, and maximizing assets under management is the best strategy for him.
Even if Pershing USA's IPO only raised $12 billion, and the $18 billion in other Pershing funds eventually re-registered in the US with the same fee structure, it would still have $30 billion under management, yielding 2% regardless of the results. Perhaps this will put him in a better position in the current realities than the "2 and 20" model he used before.
But in reality, things don't work quite like that. Pershing did not offer this IPO directly to investors whose money it would manage. They offer this to institutions that manage the funds for them and also charge their own management fees. If you look at Pershing Square Holdings' shareholders now, the biggest American names are other managed funds.
The largest institutional shareholders of these funds are also other managed funds. Some of these funds own nothing but other funds, and this is to be expected since the securities market has been securitized. America's business is business, and the financing of the financial industry is carried out through financial markets.
All of these portfolios are designed to provide some balance of growth and income, and it's only natural that they use each other's shares to achieve their goals, and no one does it for free. The largest publicly announced shareholder of Pershing Square Holdings is River North Opportunities Fund. Parish commissions and other fund components are built into the cost of the investment products they offer.
The 1-1.3% fees charged by Saba and River North should remain low, because if they were higher, investors might not buy them. Investors are very sensitive to costs. Do you have any advice for new investors? They say that the eighth wonder of the world is compound interest, or compound income, so your main enemy is high fees.
If you had invested $100,000 over the past 30 years at 8% per annum, you would have over a million dollars. But if you pay 2% commission every year, like many mutual funds, you'll get 400,000 less. If you understand this, you will earn. And if not, you will pay for it . That's right. Reducing fees to maximize profits is perhaps the oldest principle of money management.
And companies will never stop using this as an argument because it works. This Quest Trade ad is from this year. The investment products market changed dramatically in the 2000s with the advent of exchange-traded funds (ETFs). ETFs are open- ended investment funds. When an investor buys ETF shares, the funds are invested in the set of securities that the fund focuses on.
When an investor sells ETF shares, the fund sells a portion of its portfolio to obtain cash to pay the investor. This is different from closed-end funds Parachene and River North, which do just one IPO and then manage that money in a listed fund. ETFs are mostly passive. They are not necessarily aimed at making a profit, but simply give investors access to certain assets.
The first was SPY, which simply owns stocks from the S&P 500. Since there is no active management strategy, the funds simply hold the assets listed in the description, so they don't need to charge large fees. For example, the Vanguard SPY fund charges a paltry 0.0945% annual management fee. Index ETFs were among the first, and they spawned a host of other sector ETFs, gold funds, and managed products investing in specific sectors.
Some of them charge a little more for selecting stocks within the theme the ETF is targeting. For example, Kathy Wood's Ark Invest is the gold standard among actively managed ETFs. Ark Innovation ETF invests shareholder funds in companies that Katie and her team have identified as having the potential for disruptive innovation.
The ARKX commission is 75 basis points. The number of ETFs more than doubled from 2010 to 2022 as many investors do not want to pay for management that may generate income but offers no guarantees. They prefer to manage their own risks with ready-made products designed to track specific sectors. Pershing Square didn't push the idea of a closed-end fund with lower fees because Bill didn't see his work as valuable enough.
He did this as a response to a general trend. ETFs are open-ended funds, so they do not conduct IPOs. Their managers simply register them, advertise them, and if there is demand, investors buy them. Many of them are run by computers that buy and sell stocks based on the inflow and outflow of capital.
Closed-end funds, such as Pershing and some others that own Pershing shares, receive only the capital that was raised during the IPO. After that, any other capital they have comes only from growth. Pershing Square has been showing significant growth for almost 20 years. On paper, it looks pretty simple.
If we look at the quarterly reports for the last couple of years, we see that Pershing always holds 7 to 10 large US stocks. The size of the positions varies from quarter to quarter. He sticks to what he likes and usually ends up winning. What sets Bill apart is his timing and work style. Bill doesn't bet blindly.
He gets involved in affairs in good companies that do not reflect their true value. For example, he bought Google's positions when Alphabet was struggling because the market didn't believe in their AI development strategy. Sometimes companies are mismanaged, and Ekman buys enough shares to get a seat on the board, implement a turnaround plan, boost the stock's valuation, and then sell them.
Moving on to the next opportunity , his deal with Lowe's worked out great. He also made huge money on bond swaps at the start of the pandemic. It does n't always work, but more often than not, and that's why he's Bill Ekman. This is why Pershing Square generates consistently high returns and why other closed-end funds include Pershing Square in their assets.
Regarding closed-end funds listed in the US, the largest are investment funds that work primarily with bonds and other types of fixed- income securities. The largest of them range in size from $4 to $6 billion . When we move on to those that mostly own other funds, like SEAS or RiverNorth, their volume is less than half a billion.
Pershing Square Holdings is bigger than all of them, and Pershing Square USA would be twice as big, cost less, and would likely perform much better than most of the investment funds it is compared to. Of course, no one wanted to buy it. Retail investors would likely be interested in it after going public , but Pershing can't do an IPO through Robinhood.
It needs a distributor among institutional investors. Think of the entire universe of closed-end investment products that are components of each other. There are also open-end ETF products that include closed-end funds. And each of these funds charges a management fee in addition to the fees charged by the funds in their portfolio.
Perhaps asset managers felt that if the idea of lower fees caught on at the level of top managers who were truly good enough to charge high fees, it would soon reach their level as well. Investors might start asking, " If Bill Ackman takes 2 % of gross income, why should I pay you another 1% to lump him in with a bunch of other funds that also take 1%?" Ekman and Pershing Square Capital say they will try again with another IPO product once they reassess the market and create one that has a better chance of success.
But if we've learned anything here, and they want to bring in these other institutions, maybe they should try doubling the fees.
Comments 0