Ackman:Wachovia Should Sell Businesses Separately

Activist investor Bill Ackman said Monday that Wachovia Corp. (WB) would be best off selling off its banking and brokerage businesses separately, and that he expects the bidding war for the bank to be resolved in weeks rather than months.

Speaking at the fourth annual Value Investing Congress at Lincoln Center in New York, Ackman said his hedge fund has piled into Wachovia shares because he sees it as "one of the more fascinating investment opportunities" he's seen in recent times. Ackman, whose Pershing Square Capital Management now owns more than 7% of Wachovia's stock, said he started "aggressively" buying shares of the bank at $1.84 on the afternoon of Sept. 29, after Wachovia said it was being acquired by Citigroup Inc. (C). He then sold 9.5 million shares after Wells Fargo Corp. (WFC) came in with a rival bid last Friday, and then bought again when Citi challenged the Wells Fargo transaction.

The company is best sold off in two pieces because of the tax benefits of such a transaction, said Ackman, who acknowledged Wachovia is only his second investment in a financial-services company in the past five years. The other one is a "small" position in American International Group Inc. (AIG), which he took last month. He said Pershing Square is a "top 10 or 12" shareholder in AIG, and that he started buying the insurer's shares when they were trading at about the levels they're trading at now. AIG shares recently traded at $3.78, down 8 cents.

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