US hedge fund manager Bill Ackman has decided to switch the planned listing of one of his funds from London to Amsterdam, following several years of trying to float in the British capital.
Mr Ackman’s Pershing Square hedge fund, which has been trying to raise money for a so-called permanent capital vehicle for at least two years, said yesterday that it was formally launching a $2bn fundraising on the Euronext Amsterdam exchange.
Pershing Square has built a reputation as an aggressive investor that made large profits from forcing changes at the companies it invests in.
Earlier this year, Mr Ackman pressed Botox manufacturer Allergan to put itself up for sale.
He has also achieved notoriety for what he has called a “patriotic” bet against the nutritional supplements company Herbalife, which he has argued is a pyramid scheme, repeatedly attacking its business model in public. Herbalife has denied the allegations.
By selling shares in his fund on an exchange, Mr Ackman will in effect be able to manage the funds raised in perpetuity – meaning he avoids the risk of large-scale investor redemptions that exist in a regular hedge-fund structure.
Raising capital in this “permanent” form allows managers such as Mr Ackman to wage long-term campaigns for corporate change without worrying about investors losing their patience and pulling money out.
While the choice to list the vehicle in Europe is unlikely to have any impact on the geography of where Mr Ackman chooses to invest, he has previously said that he believes the continent is ripe for a wave of activist investment campaigns. This year, Dan Loeb’s Third Point hedge fund took a stake in the Dutch conglomerate Royal DSM, arguing it was valued at lower than the sum of its parts.
People familiar with the process said Amsterdam offered sufficient liquidity to make it an attractive lower cost alternative to London.
US private equity group KKR previously used Amsterdam for a listing, before moving to New York.