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Billionaire investor Bill Ackman is a wordy adversary on social media

A recent New York Times profile prompted Ackman to post a 4,200-word reply on X

Billionaire investor Bill Ackman can be thin-skinned

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Proinsias O'Mahony
Sun Apr 7 2024 - 06:00

Billionaire investor Bill Ackman seems to spend a lot of time on X, posting lengthy screeds that test the stamina of even the most devoted of his 1.2 million followers.

Described as “most verbose” in his high school yearbook, a recent New York Times profile prompted Ackman to post a 4,200-word reply. One complaint included the paper’s reference to a “small dinner” Ackman hosted for a “dozen or so guests”.

Ackman considers a “small dinner” to be two or four guests. “The reporter uses ‘small dinner’ and refers to ‘the dozen or so guests’ to imply that my concept of small is a normal person’s concept of large”, he complained.

This “implies we typically host lavish banquets”. A second crime was when the paper said Ackman “can be generous, personally paying for medical bills and helping employees pay off debt”.

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The “implication of ‘can be’ is that I am often not”, complained Ackman. “This could not be further from the truth.” The reporter “chose to say ‘can’ instead of ‘is’, and from that we understand her bias and how it affects the reader.”

The NYT s unlikely to be losing sleep over complaints such as this.

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