Here is the audio of Bill Ackman’s press conference at the Value Investing Congress. If you are an investor of any type, you must listen to it..
The questions are hard to hear (that does not matter) but Ackman’s answers are very clear and great stuff. For me, this was the highlight of the conference. Ackman was very gracious with his time answered questions on all subject for over an hour. I was able to ask him about short selling disclosure, Borders (being on the board he opted not to answer), and why hedge funds have such a lousy reputation.
He talks about AIG (AIG), Wachovia (WB), Citi (C), Wells Fargo (WFC), the SEC, Treasury, the Fed, the “Bailout”, Longs Drug (LDG), Walgreen’s (WAG), CVS (CVS), Borders (BGP), Barnes and Noble (BKS).
Disclosure (“none” means no position):Long BGP, WFC, C, none
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2 replies on “@VIC Bill Ackman Press Conference”
Todd,
From about the 15th minute in this presentation, Ackman talks about a solution to the CDS blowup being the creation of a CDS exchange. He mentioned, though, that such an exchange met resistance from the investment banks because they made so much money off of the bid-ask spread. But how could the banks stop or curb the creation of such an exchange? It’s a free country, and if there’s so much money to be made, it’s hard to believe the banks could have stopped such an exchange emerging.
my guess is that without them providing trading or liquidity for it, it just could not happen