As the coronavirus emerged,
Bill Ackman
made billions betting that the market was misjudging the virus’s economic toll.
Then he did it again a year later.
In two complex debt investments—one presaging the economy’s swift shutdown and the other its fevered reopening—Mr. Ackman made nearly $4 billion in profit on an outlay of about $200 million, according to fund documents and people familiar with the matter. In short, he called the pandemic’s economic fallout coming and going.
It is another chapter in the rise-and-fall-and-rise-again saga of the hedge-fund manager, who last week disclosed a substantial stake in streaming giant
Netflix Inc.
Mr. Ackman made his name as a corporate rabble-rouser, building his firm, Pershing Square Capital Management, into one of the biggest activist funds in the world. Then came…
