Bill Ackman: Warren Buffett Has Been My ‘Unofficial’ Mentor For Many Years

During this interview with CNBC, Bill Ackman explained why Warren Buffett has been his ‘unofficial’ mentor for many years, saying that the ability to take a long-term view in investing is a huge advantage, and it is one of the reasons why his firm has been so successful in recent years.Here’s an excerpt from the interview:

Ackman: I sort of decided at 50, I was like okay I’m not going to make any more mistakes, and I made one.

But no look we’ve been very fortunate, we’ve had the best five years in the history of the firm.

And we’re fortunate in the way that we’re structured. I’ve been a kind of Warren Buffett devotee unofficial, he’s been my unofficial mentor for many years.

And if you look at his trajectory, he started out as a what today you would call an activist hedge fund manager running a series of private partnerships.

Over time he took control of what he called a crappy textile company or probably what’s best described as a crappy textile company.

But the access to the permanency of that capital gave him the ability to take kind of the very long-term view in a world where people in the investment management business generally have to make short-term decisions because their capital can leave.

We really five years ago got to that place in terms of the structure of our organization and allows us to take the kind of very long-term view.

And we can buy Google at $94 a share when people are scared about… and we can own it and that I think is a nice fortunate competitive advantage we have.

You can watch the entire discussion here: