New York billionaire seeks permission for ‘temple for a titan’

Investor Bill Ackman trying to win approval for a controversial penthouse overlooking Central Park

The billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman will on Tuesday attempt to convince New York's powerful Landmarks Preservation Commission to allow him to build a flying saucer" penthouse on top of a historic apartment building in the Upper West Side overlooking Central Park.

Ackman, a Harvard-educated activist investor who famously made $2.6bn (2.2bn) profit in a single day betting on the financial impact of coronavirus during the early days of the pandemic, has been engaged in a years-long public relations battle with his merely millionaire neighbours to garner support for his planned Norman Foster-designed two-storey penthouse that has been described as a temple to a titan".