William Ackman

With just two days until General Growth Properties Inc. faces a major debt deadline, activist investor William Ackman is doubling down on his gutsy bet that the ailing mall giant will be able to avoid bankruptcy. Last month, Mr. Ackman reported that he had acquired a 7.5% stake in General Growth, which has been struggling all year to reduce its crushing $27 billion debt load.

With his fortunes sinking along with Target Corp.'s stock price, activist investor William Ackman said he will unveil a "potential transaction" today that he believes will pump up shares and build long-term value for shareholders.

It's an aggressive move for Ackman, whose Pershing Square Capital Management hedge fund owns a nearly 10 percent stake in Minneapolis-based Target.

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Hedge fund Pershing Square Capital Management LP's outspoken manager William Ackman, who has made headlines over the past year for his short positions (namely the financial services sector), took aim at the $700 billion bailout bill and Securities and Exchange Commission's short selling ban at the 4th Annual New York Value Investing Congress on Monday.

Hedge fund manager William Ackman is counting on comebacks for Sears Holdings Corp. and Target Corp., even as earnings declined, in a bet against fellow investors who have sent short interest sales to record highs.

The 42-year-old founder of New York-based Pershing Square Capital Management LP has won these kinds of retail bets in the past, most recently in a gain of as much as $202 million on his against-the-market investment in Longs Drug Stores Corp.

So you want to be a short-seller (or an activist). Here are some lessons gleaned from Pershing Square Capital founder William Ackman at WSJ's Deals & Deal Makers conference Wednesday.

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Hedge fund manager William Ackman, who is betting against shares of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, criticized a government plan to shore up the mortgage-finance companies and said he proposed an alternative that would wipe out stockholders.

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From the article:”Sears Holdings‘ annual meeting apparently turned into a battle of the hedge fund managers as William Ackman took Sears chairman Edward Lampert to task over the retailer’s performance.

“You’re the reason we’re here,” Mr. Ackman, the head of hedge fund Pershing Square Management told Mr. Lampert. “We think Sears is undervalued. Your disclosure is not as forthcoming as it should be.”

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Pershing Square's Bill Ackman presented his plan for the bond insurers MBIA (MBI) and Ambac (ABK).

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It was the $109,000 photocopying bill that hedge fund manager William Ackman says made him realize how much he'd read and underlined before betting against bond insurer MBIA Inc. in 2002.

His law firm charged him for copying 725,000 pages of financial statements and other documents, 140,000 of them about MBIA, to comply with a subpoena. Following New York and U.S. probes of his trading and reports, Ackman persisted in challenging MBIA's AAA credit rating for more than five years, based on his own research.

Bill Ackman's comments on MBIA & the bond insurers on Bloomberg TV