Pershing Square quits Amsterdam to save cash
Pershing Square Holdings (PSH ) has confirmed it is leaving the Amsterdam Euronext just a month after the US hedge fund’s manager Bill Ackman condemned attacks on Israeli football fans in the Dutch capital.
In an announcement to the stock exchange, the £8.2bn investment company said it was ditching its dual listing to focus on its place on London’s FTSE 100 in order to save money.
The board undertook a review of the number of shares held on the register in Amsterdam and the cost of maintaining the listing and concluded that dropping the listing would reduce ‘administrative and compliance burdens’.
In January the company employed advisers to review the listing ‘in light of the fact that the majority of the trading of Pershing Square’s shares’ happens in London, said fund chair Rupert Morley.
‘We concluded that delisting from Euronext Amsterdam and consolidating trading on the London Stock Exchange would reduce regulatory complexity and improve liquidity of Pershing Square shares, which would be to the benefit of shareholders,’ he said.
The move away from Amsterdam may have been accelerated by Ackman, the billionaire founder and chief executive of its fund manager Pershing Square who with colleagues owns 23% of the shares. Ackman was not mentioned in the announcement but was vocal in his condemnation of attacks on Israeli football fans last month.
On X, formerly Twitter, Ackman said he would ask the board to remove Pershing Square from the Amsterdam stock exchange for moral reasons and financial reasons after supporters of Israeli club Maccabi Tel Aviv were the victims of hit and run incidents and beatings by people chanting pro-Palestinian slogans.
Ackman said on the social media platform that ‘concentrating on one exchange, the London Stock Exchange, and leaving a jurisdiction that fails to protect its tourists and minority populations combine both good business and moral principles’.
He added: ‘We can also save money and improve liquidity for shareholders to boot.’
I am going to seek approval from the board of Pershing Square Holdings— in which I and my family own 23% of the shares—to eliminate its listing on the @euronext Amsterdam exchange.
— Bill Ackman (@BillAckman) November 8, 2024
The board had been considering the move because our second listing on the @LSEplc now represents…
At the time Dutch prime minister Dick Schoof said the attacks were ‘unadulterated antisemitic violence’.
The decision marks the end of an era for Pershing Square, which started with a listing in Amsterdam in 2014, adding a London listing in 2017. However, around 90% of trades in the shares of the investment company are transacted in the English capital.
Peel Hunt analyst Anthony Leatham said the Pershing Square board have been ‘looking at the structure and at the stubbornly wide discount’ that has hung over the shares for a number of years, and currently sits at 30%.
Last month it announced an additional $100m share buyback programme that will take the total it has bought back since May 2017 to $1.4bn.
Pershing Square shares have rallied 9% since the US election a month ago, taking their advance over one year to 26% and 191% over five years.
