NEW YORK: Less than a year after Bill Ackman backed Vivek Ramaswamy’s fledgling asset management company, the billionaire investor is throwing his support behind his beneficiary’s hopes of winning the 2024 presidential election. 

Ackman, manager of the London-listed Pershing Square Holdings (PSH ) investment trust, tweeted his support for Ramaswamy, an entrepreneur and author who heads the ‘anti-woke’ Strive Asset Management, a couple of days after Politico profiled the 37-year-old and his political ambitions.

‘I am going to make a bold and early call,’ Ackman said on Twitter, predicting that Ramaswamy ‘will run for POTUS and win. I think the country is ready for his message. He is young, smart, talented and will attract the centre to the right to win. He speaks hard truths which many believe but fear to say.’

Ackman was referencing a clip of a speech Ramaswamy delivered at an event for Turning Point USA, a nonprofit that advocates for conservative politics at colleges and high schools. 

In the speech, Ramaswamy, whose parents immigrated from India, denounced the ‘cultural cancer’ of identity politics and the notion ‘that if you’re Black you’re inherently disadvantaged, that if you’re white you’re inherently privileged.’ He went on to bemoan ‘the scarlet R’ of being called a racist, which he said has created ‘a new culture of fear in our country’.

In subsequent tweets, Ackman told his followers that ‘you won’t likely agree with all of (Ramaswamy’s) views, but you respect his candour, acumen, discipline and energy,’ while adding that ‘the improbable candidate often wins’.

The founder of the Pershing Square Capital Management hedge fund company, Ackman was an early backer of Strive. Ramaswamy launched the firm last year with additional backing from billionaire Peter Thiel and a handful of other wealthy individuals. 

Strive’s mission has been to act as an anti-ESG activist, pushing companies including ExxonMobil, Disney and Apple to focus less on social issues such as diversity or climate change and more on maximising shareholder returns. 

Active political backer

Ackman has a history of political contributions to a variety of candidates in both major parties, though he typically favours Democrats over Republicans; Ramaswamy’s language echoes that used by prominent GOP politicians such as Florida Governor Ron DeSantis – and the two may end up competing with each other, former President Donald Trump and a slew of other Republicans for the party’s 2024 presidential nomination. 

Ackman in February 2016 called on former New York City mayor and fellow billionaire Mike Bloomberg to run for president (he didn’t, though Bloomberg went on to run unsuccessfully in 2020).

Ackman said in November 2016 that he was ‘very bullish on Trump’. In 2020, though, he butted heads with the then-President over the Republican’s approach to the Covid-19 pandemic.  

Ackman reportedly got into a heated back-and-forth with President Joe Biden in 2017 at the SkyBridge Alternatives (Salt) Conference, where the then-former vice president and the investor were featured speakers.

Most of Ackman’s contributions in recent years have gone to winning Democratic candidates in tight races, including Arizona Senator Mark Kelly, Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, Colorado Senator Michael Bennet and Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia, according to Federal Election Commission records.

Ackman also has donated to The Great Task, a political action committee led by former Representative Liz Cheney, the Wyoming Republican who bucked her party’s trend and supported Trump’s impeachment for his role in the 6 January 2021 riots; and to Win the Era, a PAC tied to presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg, who went on to become Biden’s transportation secretary after bowing out in the 2020 primaries. 

Ackman did not financially back any 2020 presidential candidate, according to FEC records. He previously gave money to the campaigns of former president Barack Obama in 2008 and Senator Mitt Romney in 2012.  

Others are not as keen on Ramaswamy’s political prospects, including political commentator Josh Barro, who predicted in response to Ackman that ‘normal people have never heard of (Ramaswamy) and will never notice his presidential campaign’.

‘Americans are reacting with one voice (to) the Ramaswamy for President campaign, and they are saying, “Who?”’ Barro wrote on Twitter. ‘And then when he says he’s going to fight the scourge of ESG investing, they are saying “What?”’

Vivek Ramaswamy is not famous. Normal people have never heard of him and will never notice his presidential campaign. https://t.co/THLTMxM22g

— Josh Barro (@jbarro) February 16, 2023

ESG in the firing line

Ramaswamy’s longshot presidential bid comes amid a backlash against ESG investing led by Republican state officials in several states.

Politico reported that Ramaswamy considered but eventually decided against running for US Senate in his home state of Ohio in recent years.

Since 2020, Ramaswamy has contributed more than $89,000 to various political campaigns, according to FEC records. That includes at least $10,000 each to a fund dedicated to helping the GOP win Senate seats in Georgia in 2020; the main fundraising platform of the Republican National Committee; and the Ohio Republican Party State Central & Executive Committee. 

Since launching Strive last year, Ramaswamy’s firm has put eight exchange-traded funds in the field which have collectively amassed more than $600m in roughly half a year, according to data from Morningstar Direct. 

The bulk of that is concentrated in the $399m Strive US Energy ETF (DRLL), which secured most of its inflows in its first month. That’s followed by the $120m Strive 500 ETF (STRV) and a smattering of assets in other strategies. 

The $104m Strive Emerging Markets Ex-China ETF (STXE), which launched on 31 January, enjoyed a $103m surge of inflows on the day it launched, according to Morningstar Direct records.