Bill Ackman, Chairman of Pershing Square Capital, is speaking at the Salt Conference held in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA in May 2017. /Reuters Yonhap News
As the power struggle continues over the anti-Semitism of Harvard University and Bill Ackman, chairman of Pershing Square Capital, a billionaire investor who graduated from the university, Chairman Ackman brought up an anecdote related to Coupang, the largest e-commerce company in Korea.
On the 13th (local time), Ackman said on his “It is true that there was a possibility,” he wrote. He clarified that the reason he has a voice in Harvard’s operations is not only because of differences in his stance on anti-Semitism. Ackman, who received a master’s degree in business administration (MBA) from Harvard University’s sociology department and the same university’s business school, is a hedge fund magnate with a net worth of $3.5 billion (approximately 4.6 trillion won) and a ‘big money’ in the university community. In particular, he donated tens of millions of dollars to his alma mater, Harvard University, over the years.
Ackman, who is of Jewish descent, sent a letter to the Harvard Board of Trustees on the 10th calling for the dismissal of Harvard University President Claudine Gay, saying she made comments that appeared to condone anti-Semitic remarks by students at a U.S. Congressional hearing. On the 12th, the Harvard University Board of Trustees stated, “Harvard University should have stated its stance more clearly against Hamas terrorism,” and announced its intention to reappoint President Gay. On this day, Ackman wrote to There was also controversy over whether the billionaire was using donations as a weapon to infringe on freedom of expression, which is the lifeblood of universities.
A day after his alma mater’s board of trustees announced its intention to reappoint President Gay, Ackman posted a long message on X. He wrote that the conflict between himself and his alma mater goes back to when Harvard University arbitrarily disposed of stocks he had donated. In 2017, Ackman donated the unlisted shares of Coupang that he owned to Harvard as a fund to recruit top talent. An agreement was made that if the value of the stock exceeded $15 million, Harvard University would use the difference for on-campus projects. At the time, it was reported that the value of the Coupang stock that Ackman donated to Harvard University was approximately $10 million. Ackman is known as an early investor in Coupang, and the U.S. media sometimes describes Coupang as ‘Korea’s Amazon, which Ackman planted.’
When Coupang was listed on the U.S. Nasdaq in 2021, the value of the stocks donated by Ackman jumped to $85 million. Ackman proposed to Harvard University to conduct several on-campus projects with profits from the stocks, but Harvard University informed him that it had already disposed of the unlisted shares of Coupang that Ackman had donated a year ago. Ackman said he found out late that the Coupang stock he had donated to his alma mater had been sold, and said, “I was very disappointed to have lost more than $75 million in profits due to a bad investment by Harvard University.”
Ackman said, “I have serious concerns about Harvard’s leadership and management in light of how the Harvard Board of Trustees has responded to the gay president incident and the eruption of anti-Semitism on campus.”
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2023-12-13 13:13:54
