American billionaire Bill Ackman seeks to ditch fund’s Amsterdam itemizing

Concern: American billionaire Bill Ackman

American billionaire Bill Ackman plans to scrap his investment fund’s listing in Amsterdam in favour of London after anti-Semitic attacks on football fans in the Dutch capital.

Shares in Pershing Square are traded in both the Netherlands and the UK where the stock is in the FTSE 100 index of blue-chip companies.

Ackman (pictured), who founded the fund and still owns a 23 per cent stake, said he will ask the board to cancel the Amsterdam listing after violence against Israeli fans on Thursday night.

And the hedge fund tycoon, who is worth around £6billion according to Bloomberg, said he is in talks with Universal Music Group to move the record label’s headquarters and listing from the Netherlands to New York. He is a major investor in Universal Music and sits on the board.

Pershing Square had been thinking about cancelling its Amsterdam listing for a while, but the violence was the ‘tipping point’, he said. Most of the fund’s trading volume now takes place on London’s stock market.

In a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, Ackman, 58, said: ‘Concentrating the listing on one exchange, the LSE, and leaving a jurisdiction that fails to protect its tourists and minority populations combine both good business and moral principle.’

Dutch police arrested 62 people following the attacks on Israeli football fans in Amsterdam after the Europa League match between Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv.

Dutch Prime Minister Dick Schoof said yesterday that he was ‘ashamed about what happened in the Netherlands’.