Shares of Brookfield Corp. closed 0.5 per cent higher on Thursday after Billionaire investor William Ackman’s Pershing Square revealed a new stake in the company in a regulatory filing.
The filing shows Pershing owned roughly 6.8 million shares of Brookfield on June 30, amounting to a roughly 0.34-per-cent stake.
It also bought 3 million shares of sportswear company Nike (NKE-N), which is approximately a 0.19-per-cent ownership.
Nike’s stock has tumbled 26 per cent since January. Speculation had mounted hours before that an activist investor had taken a stake in the company and would begin pushing it to make improvements, some fund managers told Reuters.
For Mr. Ackman, who cemented his fortune by pushing companies for changes, this marks a return to a company he invested in in late 2017 and made a US$100-million profit on.
At that time, the investment was a rare passive one for Mr. Ackman, a passionate tennis player often photographed wearing the company’s shoes, shirts and wristbands. This time, Mr. Ackman has not said what his plans are for the investment.
A spokesman for Mr. Ackman declined to comment to Reuters on what Pershing Square’s intentions were at Nike and Brookfield.
The filing, a so-called 13F filing that shows what fund managers owned at the end of the previous quarter, also shows that Pershing Square cut its stake in long-time investment Chipotle Mexican Grill by 23 per cent during the second quarter. On June 30, Pershing owned 28.8 million Chipotle shares.