Now we know what one of Ackman's two new investments is
Forbes reports that Ackman's $20 billion fund Pershing Square Capital disclosed a stake in Nomad Holdings, a special-purpose acquisition company (SPAC) that trades on the London Stock Exchange (ticker: NOMHF).
Ackman snapped up a 21.7% stake in Nomad that's worth about $350 million, the report said.
Nomad was cofounded in early 2014 by billionaire fund manager Noam Gottesman and Ackman's friend Martin Franklin, the chairman of Jarden. (Pershing Square talked about Jarden Corp. at the Sohn Conference back in May)
Shares of Nomad are up 55% since they IPO'd in September 2014.
In late April, the company said it was acquiring Iglo Foods, the largest frozen foods business in Europe. Ackman said at the Sohn Conference last month that Nomad intends to use its Iglo acquisition "as a base for future food industry acquisitions."
This isn't the first time that Ackman's dabbled in SPACs. It's proven to be a hugely successful investment strategy in the past for Ackman. In February 2011, he disclosed a 30% stake in cash-shell company Justice Holdings (it traded under the ticker symbol JUSH on the London Stock Exchange).
That investment vehicle was also cofounded by Ackman's buddy, Martin Franklin.
Ackman later used Justice Holdings to buy Burger King and returned the burger chain as a publicly traded company listed on the New York Stock Exchange. Last year, Burger King acquired Canadian coffee and donut chain Tim Hortons. It now trades as Restaurant Brands International.
Last month, during a conference call with Pershing Square Holdings investors, Ackman said that his fund had two new investments, one small and one large.
It appears Nomad is definitely the smaller of the two investments.
Ackman said the large one was "approaching 15% of capital." (That would be about $3 billion, according to our calculations.) He also said during that call that it could be "a couple of months before we are required to make a disclosure." (Hedge funds are required to file a disclosure with the Securities and Exchange Commission if they own 5% or more of a company's stock.)
Now here's a chart of Nomad:
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