Those who talk finance with me know that I have an abiding respect for investor Bill Ackman.  It comes close to man-love, I must admit.  Bill is eloquent, thoughtful, intelligent, well-informed and any other adjective that gives praise.

My first experience reading about and listening to Bill came about this time last year when I was struggling with whether to invest in General Growth Properties.  At the time last April, GGP was entering bankruptcy.  But the market and economy had just begun to turn and I had personal experience with GGP properties and management and thought the company had excellent mall properties and was well run.  I wanted to invest in GGP which was then selling for only $0.65 per share and had a total capitalization only around $200M on a business with properties once valued at $30B.  If it were possible to solve the debt problem at GGP, then the company had an excellent chance of survival.

Enter Bill Ackman into my life.  As I was researching GGP, I came across research that Bill had put together as his hedge fund, Pershing Square Capital Management.  He had done a very thorough job researching GGP and was able to show that with even modest "cap rate" assumptions, GGP would do very well.  All it needed was time to restructure its debt.  Ackman proceeded to take an active role in buying time for GGP, first by offering to provide bridge (DIP) financing (later provided by another party), helping convince the court of the merits of GGPs survival and later by joining the GGP Board of Directors. 

As the year 2009 progressed, Ackman's activism and my confidence in his research proved very profitable for both of us.  I have now exited my GGP investment (much too early) but Ackman, to my knowledge, remains on board and has seen his investment return over 20-fold.  I admire this type of clear vision and the courage to act on it.

Ackman was a noted short trader earlier in his career.  He gained notoriety for his big short position in credit card company MBIA in 2005, for which he was investigated by the now-notorious Elliot Spitzer, then New York State Attorney General.  He was able to demonstrate to Mr. Spitzer his innocence and turned the table on MBIA by exposing the Attorney General their fraudulent practices, the reason for his short position  (presaging the debt crisis to come).  He took a "sow's ear" and turned it into the proverbial "silk purse".  That taxes moxy.  That takes class.

Given his career path and the level to which he has risen, Ackman is very intimate with the inner workings of Wall Street.  He shows himself to be rational and level-headed and has a thorough, first-hand understanding of the arcane financial instruments that Wall Street has created.  So, when he gives his opinion on the Goldman Sachs situation, I listen (much more so than to EF Hutton).  Today as guest host on CNBC Squawk Box, Bill Ackman shared with us his assessment.  He comes down on the side of Goldman Sachs for all the reasons I have provided in the past two weeks, but with the conviction that can come from only an insider.  Here is an excerpt from the show:

Goldman Sachs did not commit fraud and the insurance company that bought the product that is the subject of a government investigation should have known the risks, Bill Ackman, founder and CEO of hedge fund Pershing Square Capital Management, told CNBC Tuesday.

“I don’t believe that Goldman committed fraud,” Ackman told “Squawk Box Europe.” “(ACA, the counterparty to Goldman - Paulson Partners) took their own risks.  "They’re sophisticated investors.” “I don’t think the (Securities and Exchange Commission) has a good case,”  Ackman said.

“Having been the subject of investigation in the past  (for the MBIA case referenced earlier)… I don’t feel sorry for Goldman Sachs, but they’re not being treated fairly (either).”

Not only does Ackman contend that Goldman is innocent of the charges of fraud, as I also maintain, in addition, it would even have been unethical if Goldman had disclosed that hedge fund manager John Paulson was shorting the housing trade to any investors taking long positions, Ackman said.

Ackman argued that sophisticated investors (the German and Dutch bank that bought the long positions from ACA) have the information at their disposal to make their own decisions, and are also responsible for their own mistakes.

“Imagine that Soros and Buffett were on the two sides of this transaction,” he said. “We wouldn’t even be talking about this now.” 

But later in the interview, Ackman states that the true victims are the taxpayers as they do not know they are party to the trade via "too big to fail" and taxpayer rescues.  This is true in Germany and the UK, as well as in America.  It is the taxpayer that has to cover the losses made by overly aggressive bank managers who are playing with OTM (other people's money) in order to win large bonuses.

So, it is not Goldman Sachs that should be taking the fall for the financial crisis, but the bank managers that lost money and the regulators / government officials that are charged by the public with protecting the financial system.  The "witch hunt" that is today's Congressional hearing is completely misdirected and intended to make the Congressmen who failed in their sworn responsibilities, look better, much better, than they really are. 

 

At the end of this segment, the former SEC general counsel, Simon Lorne, appeared with Bill Ackman. Mr. Lorne offered his highly informed opinion that the case by the SEC against Goldman Sachs is "weak". This is the position I have maintained. The facts will show that there was no "fraud". If anything, there may have been some technical error of omission where disclosure is involved. This might justify a fine of some sort, even a large fine given the stakes involved. But Mr. Lorne says it all much better than me:

Disclosure: I am long GS with October Call contracts; If I could be, I would be short the Congress;

Tags: 100m, Abiding Respect, Adjective, Bill Ackman, Buying Time, Cap Rate, Capitalization, Clear Vision, Debt Problem, First Experience, General Growth Properties, GGP, Goldman, GS, hedge fund, Investment Return, Investor Bill, Mbia, Notoriety, Pershing Square, Pershing Square Capital, Pershing Square Capital Management, Personal Experience, SEC, Short Position

In the Land of the Rising Sun, the financial sun is apparently setting. I have zero investments today in Japan for the reasons outlined in the story linked below. Credit Default Swaps (CDS) are showing the Japanese banks are under great stress. Those bank debt insurance policies are at levels close to where American banks were in September 2008 before the big crash and bank implosion.

I have business associates in Japan, and the economy has been in virtual depression for many years. They have a homeless problem like you would not believe with tent villages on public grounds in the cities, especially around the old castles (but being Japanese, they are very tidy tent villages).

From my take on the Japanese people, the problem is mostly to do with their domestic reluctance to consume. They have a domestic consumption economy much too small for the size of the country (by population). The older generation that came of age post WW2, was reluctant to spend on anything, understandably so given what they went through in the years after 1945. Even the business leaders who make a very nice income by American standards, are very frugal in how they live. The wages for the workers among the younger generations are very modest. I was able to determine that a sales person selling the same products as me, with the same skill set and experience, was making half the wage. The Japanese I know can’t believe how well we live here in America and some consider us wasteful and decadent (though they enjoy participating in the decadence when they visit).

And with the WW2 generation being very conservative about their own future, they had small families with birth rates below the "replacement rate" of about 2.2 children per family. This, along with virtually no immigration, leads to the well known problem of Japan’s gentrification. Who is going to take care of all the older people on government pension and healthcare?

And now Japan has lost the one thing that kept it going and growing the past 40-50 years: a leading global position in manufacture and export of consumer goods. China and its siblings (Taiwan, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, etc) are taking over this role on the world stage. Japan is left to try and export capital goods and engineering know-how to China and siblings, much like America. But America has a population that always expands from immigration (a reason I am VERY pro-immigration) and an established consumer psychology that will recover within the next few years, Bill Gross’ proclamations to the contrary. Our desire to consume is genetic. It is the source of the proverbial "American Dream".

A second significant problem for Japan is that Japan has no natural resources to export. So, they have lost their consumables export leadership and have nothing left to sell the rest of the world to drive their economy. Japan does not consume enough as a nation to fully utilize its own productive capacity for domestic demand and to keep its younger workers employed to pay for the retirements of the older workers. This is the source of Japanese deflation.

I think Japan will either evolve out of necessity into a consumer nation over the next 20 years as the younger generations with Western ideals take over management of the country, or Japan's financial system will go into default. In October last year, the world financial system came to the rescue of America with its heavy importation of manufactured products and its reserve currency. The world had to save American banks in order to save itself. But for Japan, there will be no such salvation. Its banks will be allowed to fail and the Japanese people will have to build the country all over.

If Japan defaults, it will be VERY ugly (Iceland times 100). So, I expect global financial interests to push the Japanese to avoid that fate before it happens. Ironically, the Japanese need to spend their savings (those infamous Postal accounts). That is their one chance to save themselves and the rest of the planet a lot of pain. Strange as it seems for Americans with our low national savings rate, it is possible for a nation to be too thrifty (called "The Paradox of Thrift"). There is a need for balance in a sustainable economy: not too little savings, but not too much; not too little social security, but not too much (Obamacare for example); not too little immigration, and not too much. And so on.

Just be glad this is happening now and not in 1990. The Japanese economy (including real estate and stock market) has already deflated by 80%. The crash if it happens, will not be as precipitous from these levels as it could have been. But it is shocking to contemplate. I think the weakness of Japan's economic system, its lack of domestic consumption and its long term social liabilitites, is the reason the Yen will never become the world reserve currency. The dollar remains safe in that role for some time to come.

Here is a link to the article that inspired this post published in the UK Telegraph on Sunday (bottom of post). It is somewhat frightening reading. But as mentioned, I don't think the Japanese economy has a great deal of direct influence on the Rest of the World. Besides, as Warren Buffet says (quoting someone Ben Graham I believe), "Buy when everyone is Fearful and Sell when everyone is Greedy". He did that today when he acquired ALL of Burlington Northern Santa Fe rail (BNI) for $44B.

"It is Japan We Should Be Worrying About, not America"

Tags: 1945, Asia, CDS, Deflation, Japan

Warren Buffett spoke today, to the fabulous Julia Boorstin of CNBC (what great hair she has!). I don't particularly care for Buffett's politics and his ideas on taxation. But when it comes to economics and business prospects, Buffett is without match, as his investing record shows.

I agree entirely with him about the outlook for our economy the next few years. He makes the statement: "I don't know if the movie is 2 or 4 hours long, but I know it has a happy ending". What a positive point of view. More of us should share that perspective.

I am piggy-backing on many of Buffett's trades since late 2008 owning: GE, WFC, USB and GS.   These are all global franchises that for the most part, came through the crash without much damage (GE is much healthier than its stock price suggests and is a raging bargain).

Regarding the housing crisis and home building, Buffett makes the point that the housing crisis precipitated our economic crisis (but he did not lay the blame properly at the feet of a laissez faire Congress that eliminated the regulatory protections needed and cheerled the mortgage industry into the ground).  His medicine: don't build any more houses; a little simplistic, but maybe tongue in cheek.  We need to work off the inventory we already have. I think that is pretty obvious and goes without saying. But he said it by way of making the case that excess housing is the root of our problems and our economy won't truly mend until housing inventories are once again in balance.

Without saying any more, here is the interview:

Tags: 2009 predictions, BAC, Buffett, GE, GS, Home building, Julia Boorstin, UBS, Warren Buffett, WFC

Tags: Buffet, Invest, money, Warren

So who is this person, Bill Ackman, who is leading the reorganization of our favorite speculation General Growth Partners, the recently bankrupt commercial real estate developer and manager.  He is a 43 year old investment superstar, well regarded on Wall Street as a hedge fund manager.  He received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Harvard graduating Magna Cum Laude with an MBA from the same college.  He manages several billion dollars through several separate hedge funds, set up as limited partnerships. 

The prominent investments under Pershing Square's and Bill Ackman's management include a 10% plus control in Target Corp. (TGT) both through ownership of common shares and long dated call options.   His investment decision in Target went badly the past year.  He started investing in TGT in April 2007 right before the credit crisis began in earnest.  Target was greatly affected by the crisis and the resultant deep recession and its stock lost a large percentage, reportedly up to 90% of the IV fund, though Target only declined by 50% during this time.  So, it is likely this figure includes the losses in partnership IV which was comprised of the call options, which are inherently leveraged. But the more dominant III fund lost much less as a percent.  

Pershing has more recently taken a 23% stake in General Growth Partners and assisted that company, the second largest mall development and management REIT, into bankruptcy last week (April 14).  Pershing Square secured the Debtor-in-Possession financing arrangement in that bankruptcy to oversee the interests of common shareholders, most prominently his own shares, plus the 25% plus percentage owned by the founding Bucksbaum family.

Smaller deals are his stake in Longs Drugs and Borders books.  Bill Ackman, in my opinion, is filling the void left by Michael Price when he sold out of his position in Mutual Shares fund company to Franklin Templeton in the late 1990s.  Since that time, there has been no real activist investor to uncover the value still held in busted companies.  At this time of global economic crisis, we could use many more Bill Ackman's who would use their intellectual gifts and financial resources to help companies recover from their problems.

Yes, there are others who have used hedge funds to acquire businesses and put pressure on entrenched managements.  But too often, the others have used their power for personal gain, without regard to what is best for the companies they control and their stockholders, the companies' employees and society as a whole.  In the recent past, many of the companies bought out on leverage caused more pain than they alleviated, making the same ego driven mistakes as those they sought to replace.  In Bill Ackman, we have a corporate raider with a heart as well as a head.  This is a rare combination and may only come along every one or two decades.  I won't put the Warren Buffett label on Bill Ackman.  But in a couple more decades, who knows?

Tonight, Bill Ackman appeared on CNBC in a guest appearance while at an event called "Echoing Green", an environmental cause.  His honor there was our honor to listen to him candidly, and a chance to get to know him better as a person, not just a talking head on the morning show, Squawkbox.

Link to Bill Ackman appearance on CNBC, April 23, 2009

Tags: bankruptcy, Borders, Chapter 11 bankruptcy, Commercial Real Estate, Debtor in Possession Financing, DIP Financing, General Growth Partners, GGP, hedge fund, Longs Drugs, Michael Price, Mutual Series funds, Pershing Square, Target Corp., TGT, Warren Buffett, William Ackman