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Bill Ackman has cut the amount he is seeking to raise in the initial public offering of his US investment fund Pershing Square USA to $2bn, a fraction of the $25bn the billionaire hedge fund manager had initially targeted.
The cut to the fundraising target is the second in a matter of days for Ackman, one of the highest-profile investors on Wall Street.
The fund said in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing published on Tuesday that it would press ahead with a sale of its shares on the New York Stock Exchange “as soon as practicable” after it unexpectedly delayed pricing of the IPO on Friday.
Ackman has become a prominent figure on social media, with more than 1mn followers on X. Earlier this year, he endorsed Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump on the platform.
But the billionaire hedge fund manager has had to scale back plans for an ambitious launch.
Ackman had previously told investors he expected to raise $25bn, which would have made Pershing Square USA one of the largest IPOs of all time. In a letter to investors in his holding company last week, Ackman revised that down to between $2.5bn and $4bn.
Ackman’s own firm, Pershing Square Capital Management, is contributing $500mn to the offering, implying that he expects to attract $1.5bn from outside investors.
Ackman has bet on retail traders to back the listing. He has said in recent weeks that his “notoriety” on social media would give the public listing an additional boost, and could even make the fund trade at a premium to its net asset value.
But the letter from Ackman revealed that investors had expressed concerns about the proposed listing, including over his claims that the fund would trade at a premium.
His London and Amsterdam-listed vehicle Pershing Square Holdings has traded at a persistent discount.
In the letter last week, the billionaire pushed investors to place their orders with the banks underwriting the deal.
He added that it was “very important that the banks get a sense that a deal’s momentum is building” so that they could relay that to the “capital markets desks of every institutional investor”.
The company had originally been expected to price the listing on July 29, with shares due to begin trading the following day. That timetable was delayed on Friday in the wake of Ackman’s letter.
The banks leading the deal include Citigroup, UBS, Bank of America and Jefferies.
Pershing Square did not immediately respond to requests for additional comment.