Part Two: The Rise of the "Activist" Investor
6/11/20261 hr 12 min
Robert concludes the story of the rise and fall of an activist investor we can now admit was just Bill Ackman all along.
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First 90 secondsSpeaker 10:00
[upbeat music] Coolzone Media.
Robert Evans· Host0:02
Welcome back to Behind the Bastards, the only podcast that this week is talking about Bill Ackman, the patron saint of activist investors, with the great Kim Kelly. Kim, welcome back to the show. How are you doing? How are you feeling?
Kim Kelly· Guest0:21
I'm good. I'm excited to talk more about this terrible man.
Speaker 40:24
Robert, you know what I, uh, realized in between part one and part two?
Robert Evans· Host0:28
Huh?
Speaker 40:28
You know that very famous movie, Pretty Woman? Richard Gere's character.
Robert Evans· Host0:33
Yes.
Speaker 40:35
That's his job.
Robert Evans· Host0:36
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, like, that, yeah, that, that's exactly ... Like, Gere is ... And, and that, that was still when it was, like, the corporate raider thing.
Speaker 40:44
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Robert Evans· Host0:45
Right? Like, that, that's very much the point of the movie is that- Yeah ... like, he's kind of a scumbag businessman.
Speaker 40:49
[laughs] Yeah.
Kim Kelly· Guest0:50
God, the terminology is so much cooler. Like, they should have just kept doing that, honestly.
Speaker 40:55
I agree.
Robert Evans· Host0:55
Corporate raider- Just own it ... pirate. Yeah.
Kim Kelly· Guest0:57
Yeah.
Robert Evans· Host0:58
Yeah.
Kim Kelly· Guest0:58
R us, et cetera. At least just own it. If you're gonna be- Yeah ... a bastard, just be a bastard.
Robert Evans· Host1:03
Well, that was one of the more effective things about Hook is that, like, you know, uh, Robin Williams' character, who's like a grown-up Peter Pan, comes back and, like, one of his old, like, friends is like, "Oh, you're just, like, a pirate now." [laughs] Like, that's the, that's all you're doing. [laughs] [laughs] There was a really good, uh, one of the Monty Python movies, I think it was Meaning of Life, opens with, like, a good skit about basically that, about like a, like a high seas accounting firm, like ac- like, basically