This year a storied Wall Street investor had a big plan.

He was going to raise money in what would be The largest IPO of the year.

The investor was Bill Ackman.

So Bill Ackman is a hedge fund manager.

He made a name for himself

as somebody who takes small stakes and big companies and tries to agitate for change.

That's our colleague Peter Rutagir.

He likes to take a position. He's very outspoken and he he thinks he's right, and he wants to argue with people

who think he's wrong.

And that willingness to argue and to stick to a position, I think endears him to a lot of supporters. More recently, he's kind of fashioned himself as a stock picker,

as identifying undervalued stocks

in kind of the Warren Buffett style

and being able to get in early and ride them higher.

Ackman's IPO was for a new investment fund he wanted to create

called Pershing Square USA.

The idea was to let ordinary investors capitalize on his stock picks through the fund

and build a community like Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway, complete with a splashy annual meeting.

Then, to drum up even more excitement, Ackman announced the target for the funds IPO.

And how much money did Ackman want to raise?

So Bill initially told people he wanted to raise as much as $25 billion for this fund, which is just

a gargantuan amount of money for any type of stock picking fund.

$25 billion.

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