Bill Ackman’s secret to retaining top talent? Millions in stock and summers in Hamptons

Published 9 August 2026 · finance

Decades ago, remaining at a single organization throughout one's career signaled strong dedication and professional achievement. Today, widespread workforce reductions, escalating pay expectations, and the trend of switching roles regularly have significantly weakened corporate retention strategies. Nevertheless, billionaire fund manager Bill Ackman contends that businesses must continue allocating substantial financial resources to keep their top-performing talent on board. Ackman’s hedge fund Pershing Square, which oversees about $35 billion in assets, provides its roughly four dozen employees with a range of attractive workplace benefits, including broad ownership opportunities and an unusual degree of flexibility for a Wall Street firm, according to Fortune. “There’s not a person at Pershing Square that doesn’t own multiple millions of dollars of stock in the company—whether you’re cleaning the space or at the front desk or another role in the company,” Ackman told Fortune in a podcast. “We believe in taking care of our people.” The firm’s strategy for retaining workers extends well beyond compensation.

Pershing employees are expected to work from the office five days a week for 10 months of the year. July and August, however, offer considerably more flexibility. During those summer months, the investment team relocates together to the Hamptons, where employees work from homes they either own or rent. “We look after people, and so that when you operate that way, people don’t think about going anyplace else,” Ackman said. Pershing also places significant emphasis on employee health and well-being. Ackman has said the firm provides healthy food through its cafe, gym access and comprehensive healthcare benefits. Despite having only 48 employees, the company has not experienced a single “undesired departure,” according to Ackman. “I think everyone here feels accurately that they’re a big contributor to our success, and the result is we can accomplish an enormous amount,” Ackman added. Ackman’s Journey Ackman was raised in New York and graduated from Harvard with a bachelor’s degree in 1988 before earning his MBA in 1992.

That same year, he co-founded Gotham Partners with fellow Harvard graduate David P. Berkowitz. The investment firm eventually collapsed, partly because several investments in private companies failed to deliver as expected. In 2004, Ackman established Pershing Square Capital Management, the activist hedge fund that would become one of Wall Street’s most prominent investment firms. Over the years, Pershing has taken significant positions in companies such as Chipotle, Universal Music Group and J.C. Penney. The firm listed publicly on the Amsterdam Stock Exchange in 2014. Ackman believes the quality of Pershing’s team has also played a major role in its success. His career has been marked by unconventional investment decisions and a willingness to pursue controversial positions with strong conviction. “[I’m a] big believer in only hiring people of the highest character, human qualities—people you want to hang out with, spend time with,” he said. “There are a lot of super talented people, but when you combine a super talented person with great human qualities, that’s a great base to build a great culture.” Now, the 60-year-old investor sees artificial intelligence as another potentially transformative competitive advantage—for businesses as well as employees who learn to use the technology effectively.