preview

Pershing Square Capital Management Essay

Satisfactory Essays

In 2011, Pershing Square Capital Management acquired some 14.2% of Canadian Pacific Railway’s (CP) outstanding shares and proceeded to require several changes in the management and governance of the company. The CP board resisted fiercely these entreaties, which led to an intense proxy fight. Eventually, Pershing won the battle and brought in a new CEO and new board members and designed a new strategy for CP as well. Since the shakeup of the CP’s board and senior management, the company’s stock price has more than triple between 2011 and 2016. Furthermore, under the new management, CP increased operational efficiency, improved performance and enhanced competitiveness. These performance ratios and financial indicators show that CP benefited …show more content…

It is often the case that activist shareholders are only interested in the short-term profit; a strategy that is at odds with the interest of the company and the ordinary shareholders.
In 2016, for example, the hedge fund firm Pershing Square Capital Management sold its 9.8 million shares it held in CP. At that time, the stake was worth $1.9 billion at the railway's closing price of $192.49 per share on the Toronto Stock Exchange, while Pershing acquired the stock when it was trading at around $69 in 2011.
Although CP’s performance and efficiency improved after Pershing brought in a new management between 2011 and 2016, it seems that Pershing was primarily interested in the short-term profit from the investment in CP Rail and not in the long-run success and health of the company.
In the case of the bankruptcy of Sears, the company’s pensions were short of $300 million in 2018 while the firm’s shareholders had received 3 billion over the past few years. Some of payments went to the U.S. hedge fund ESL Investments and its CEO Eddie Lampert, who took control of Sears in 2005. Former Sear’s employees are understandably upset as it looks as if their pensions were sacrificed at the expense of a hedge fund firm’s

Get Access