Bill Ackman gifted roughly $400 million worth of his Pershing Square Inc. (NYSE:PS) stake to a new charitable foundation focused on brain research and rehabilitation, months after his 26-year-old daughter, Lucy, suffered a massive brain hemorrhage and underwent emergency surgery to save her life.
Health Scare That Changed Everything
Ackman said Lucy was found unconscious in her Brooklyn apartment in February by her sister, who called 911, and that doctors performed emergency surgery to relieve pressure on her brain.
“If you are going to have a devastating brain injury, now is the best time in history for that to happen,” Ackman said in a post on X, adding that Lucy’s months-long recovery included regaining her cognition and beginning to walk with assistance, though she remains unable to see.
Lucy’s own recovery, he said, may eventually involve brain-computer interface technology from companies including Neuralink, founded by Elon Musk, as well as Precision Neuroscience, Science Corp, Synchron, and Nudge.
A Mission Years in the Making
Ackman said he and his wife, architect Neri Oxman, had considered launching a brain institute five years ago, inspired by the death of Oxman’s mother from Alzheimer’s, but couldn’t make the economics work at the time.
Lucy’s hemorrhage, he said, gave the project new urgency.
The resulting Ackman Oxman Institute will be built around a roughly 680,000-square-foot campus on Manhattan’s West End Avenue, a footprint Ackman said is larger than Rockefeller University, with plans to prioritize “cures, treatments, devices, rehabilitation and exercise equipment” over academic publishing.
The board includes inventor engineer Dean Kamen, co-founder of Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ:REGN) George Yancopoulos, Nobel laureate James Rothman and neurosurgeon Chris Kellner, who has led Lucy’s care team, along with Ackman and his wife.
Ackman Plans to Give Even More
In a filing dated Aug. 19, Ackman transferred 10 million shares of Pershing Square common stock, held indirectly through WAA Management LLC, to the Ackman Oxman Institute as a bona fide gift for no consideration.
Ackman said he plans to make an additional gift of similar or greater size in a form other than Pershing Square stock, and expects to name a CEO for the institute by October.
Price Action: Pershing Square’s shares closed 0.25% lower on Wednesday at $39.81 and lost 0.03% in early pre-market trading on Thursday.
Benzinga edge rankings show Pershing Square’s stock has a positive price trend in the short, medium, and long term.
Disclaimer: This content was partially produced with the help of AI tools and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors.
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