Bill Ackman Lays Off Eight Workers

Citing people familiar with the matter, the Wall Street Journal’s David Benoit has reported that Bill Ackman’s hedge fund, Pershing Square Capital, has laid off eight lower-level staffers.

The lay offs amount to more than 10% of the firm’s staff and were mostly back-office workers.

According to the report, the layoffs were unrelated to the hedge fund’s recent poor performance and instead were due to the firm’s ability to automate back-office tasks like filling out investor forms.

Pershing Square’s publicly traded fund, which mimics the private hedge fund, is down over 20% this year.

A Pershing Square spokesman declined to comment.