Bill Ackman Family History
Overview
William (Bill) Alfred Ackman was born on May 11th, 1966 to Larry and Ronnie Ackman in Chappaqua, New York. He in fact grew up in this affluent hamlet of Westchester county. He then went to Harvard where he obtained a BA in history magna cum laude in 1988.
Bill later recalled: “I couldn’t get a job when I graduated from Harvard. So I went to work for my Dad for two years. Then I went to Harvard Business School. My Dad wanted me to come back to him and I went back for one week. Then I chose to go on my own.”
Bill started up with a fellow Harvard graduate an investment firm called Gotham Partners. The two decided to invest in Rockefeller Center Properties. The move more than doubled their Gotham money. It was this investment which made Bill want to become an “activist investor.”
The Activist Investor. What is an activist investor? Unlike most hedge-fund managers who buy and sell stocks in a bid to beat the market, activists buy large stakes in a few publicly traded companies and seek to drive their stock prices up or down (in the latter case by short-selling), then sell off their shares for a large profit.
In many cases they look to make changes in a company’s operations and threaten proxy fights in order to bring them about. Their demands would include slashing costs, restructuring management, selling off assets, and redistributing cash to shareholders in the form of dividends and buybacks.
Bill’s investment vehicle for these purposes was first Gotham Partners and then in 2004, when he had raised a $54 million kitty, Pershing Square Capital Management. Such was his success that his net worth was reported at $9.3 billion in 2024.
Ahead of the 2020 stock market crash during COVID Bill had managed to hedge Pershing Square’s portfolio, insuring the portfolio against steep market losses. The hedge was effective and generated $2.6 billion in less than one month.
Politics. Like other successful men in the New York Jewish community, Bill has been a supporter of Israel and Jewish causes, generous in his charity-giving, and Democratic in his political leanings.
His political stance has recently changed and, perhaps following the example of Elon Musk, become more vociferous on social media. This has been evident in his support for Israel (even attacking Harvard University’s President on this score) and his backing for Donald Trump in the 2024 Presidential election. However, like Musk, Bill has despaired at Trump’s tariff policies.
Curiously, as Bill’s views shifted to the right, those of his eldest daughter have moved the other way. Educated at the elitest Dalton School in New York and – like her father – at Harvard University, she has been spouting anti-capitalist views on campus.
The Ackman Name
Ackman is a Germanic surname, but not one that is well known in Germany. The surnames Ackmann and Eckmann are to be found there and they are occupational by type. They would describe a water bailiff, someone who is responsible for enforcing the rules (such as those for fishing) relating to rivers, lakes and other bodies of water. But people with these surnames total only 2-3,000 in Germany today.
From these names come the Yiddish Ackman which Jews brought with them to America. Ackmans in America today number some 2,000, with a sizeable proportion of them in and around the large cities like New York and Chicago.
Abraham Ackman Escaping Russia
Bill’s great grandfather was Abraham Ackman. He was born in 1869 in Ukraine, then part of the Czarist Russian Empire.
Abraham started out life as a shepherd. But reaching his sixteenth birthday, he realized that he might be drafted into the Czarist army. This was not a nice prospect, particularly as the draft could last as long as twenty-five years. He decided to run away.
As he said, he used a little seychl (smarts) to get across the border into Austria on a horse. He stayed in Austria for two years, apprenticing himself so that he could learn how to sew and saving up enough money so that he could buy himself a boat ticket to New York.
Abraham crossed the Atlantic to New York in 1887 – landing at Castle Garden, the immigration center prior to Ellis Island. He settled in Newark and worked as a tailor before opening his clothing factory on Staten Island.
Grandfather Herman
There is a pause in this Ackman narrative which then resumes in the 1920’s with the activities of Abraham’s sons Herman and Bert, now in their twenties.
Songwriting. As Herman’s son Larry recalled, Herman had started out wanting a career as a songwriter, peddling tunes to Tin Pan Alley. He would get $100 a song and $150 for a great song (his big hit was Put Your Arms Where They Belong), He sold maybe ten to fifteen songs over five years. Then he realized that this was no way to make a living.
Real Estate. Herman went instead into his uncle’s real estate business in the Bronx. But the 1929 Crash was coming. A year later when the Bank of United States collapsed, the family savings were wiped out. Fortunately, as Larry recalled, brother Bert had money under the mattress and was able to take care of the family during those hard times.
Herman and Bert went into the real estate service business in New York as Ackman Brothers, focusing in the 1930’s on property refinancing opportunities. After World War Two, with the post-war construction boom, the company gained a reputation as a highly capable land assembler.
Herman died in Palm Beach, Florida in 1984. His son Larry, Harvard educated, had joined Ackman Brothers in the 1960’s and succeeded him as President in 1968 and CEO in 1977.
Father Larry
Larry would steer Ackman Brothers through the unstable period of interest rate and property value fluctuations in the 1970’s and 1980’s. In 1989 he brought in new talent to the company in the shape of Simon Ziff. Simon went on to succeed him as President of Ackman-Ziff in 1995.
Simon said the following of Larry:
“Larry had a unique combination of skills; high intelligence, persistence, creativity combined with an extremely rare (in our business) eye on doing the right thing. His place in any room was significant. Physically and mentally large, and of course topped off with his bright white hair creating an even stronger presence.”
Simon went on to say:
“I’ll never forget working on deals with Larry. I don’t think he could ever fail on a deal. It started with him taking on the right deals and being intelligent enough to understand everything about the property and the capital markets and knowing that the deal was doable from the start. Lastly, he had an answer for every possible objection. Did I mention he didn’t take no for an answer? That helped too.”
In his nearly five decades at Ackman-Ziff, Larry was the behind-the-scenes power in New York real estate, putting together the financing for major projects that changed the city’s skyline. After his retirement from Ackman-Ziff In 2009, he took an office at his son Bill’s investment firm Pershing Square and formed a real estate investment partnership with him.
Larry was an active philanthropist. He endowed an ethics program at Harvard Business School and was on the board of the New York Philharmonic, helping to arrange its financing programs.
He died at the age of eighty-three in 2022.
Bill Ackman’s Family Tree
- Ahraham Ackman (b. 1869) from Ukraine (then Russia), came to New York in 1887
- – Herman Ackman (1904-1984)
- – Bert Ackman
- Herman Ackman m. Jean Miller (1916-1952) around 1936. After Jean’s death Herman rem. Hazel Harte (1913-2003)
- – Lawrence (Larry) Ackman (1939-2022)
- Lawrence (Larry) Ackman m. Ronnie Posner (b. 1941) in 1963
- – Dr. Jeanne Ackman (b. 1964) m. Robert Haimovici in 1996
- – William (Bill) Ackman (b. 1966)
- William (Bill) Ackman m. Karen Ann Herskovitz (b. 1966) in 1994, divorced in 2017; rem. Neri Oxman from Israel (b. 1976) in New York in 2019
- – three daughters (Eloise, Lucy and Liza), with Karen
- – one daughter (Raika b. 2019), with Neri
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Written by Colin Shelley