Pershing Square 2.0 1) What is Bill Ackmans broader investing philosophy? How is Ackmans investment strategy similar to those of traditional value investors? What sets Ackman apart from value investors? 2) How and why has Pershing Squares approach to investor activism evolved over time? What does it take to be a successful activist investor today? 3) Pershing Square typically runs a highly concentrated portfolio. For example, as of June 2015, Pershing Square held long positions in just 7 stocks and their largest position (Valeant Pharmaceuticals) accounted for 30% of their long portfolio. What are the tradeoffs involved in running such a highly concentrated portfolio? 4) How has Pershing Square raised capital to finance its portfolio? Who are its investors? Is there a good alignment between Pershing Squares investment strategy and its capital base? 5) Assuming Mondelez International is a worthy target, how should Pershing Square size and finance the investment? 6) Do you think that Ackman will be successful in adapting the increased competition from other hedge fund activists? Would you invest in Pershing Square today? Value Partners Group Ltd. 1) What is the investments philosophy of Value Partners Group? Who are the primary investors of the mutual funds offered by Value Partners Group? 2) What is value investing? What is the key metrics to decide whether a fund is value-biased of growth-biased? 3) Compute alternative risk measures for the four funds, in particular, including: a. standard deviation of historical returns. b. Market beta. c. Tracking error risk. Discuss in what scenario each risk measure should be considered. 4) Compute different risk-adjusted measure for evaluating the performance of the four funds, in particular, including: a. Sharpe ratio b. Treynor ratio c. Information ratio d. Jensens alpha Discuss which measures are appropriate for each client in the case, and select one fund for each client based on the performance measures. 5) Discuss how to choose the appropriate benchmark for performance evaluation. 6) Value Partners Group has emphasized bottom-up investment process. What is the performance contribution of asset allocation and stock selection for the selected funds?