Endowments are, he observed, the ultimate long-term investors, with no plans to cash out, ever.
For decades, state and local pension systems thought of themselves as America's ultimate long-term investors.
"Oxford is the ultimate long-term investor with a large amount of capital held in perpetuity.
And it could be argued, Ms. Berry said, that her group's faith-based members are "the ultimate long-term investors".
"I was still hesitant to make the ultimate long-term commitment, because I wanted her to experience the Army lifestyle," he said.
Ms. Swan of Manpower cautions that although employee referrals are a valuable tool, "you have to watch the ultimate long-term result in terms of diversity and skills".
"I believe it's important to the character of the company and its ultimate long-term success to do your very best to honor those commitments," he said.
Security types note that Dr Zahar and others still talk of capturing the whole of Palestine as the ultimate long-term goal and that Hamas's parent, the Muslim Brotherhood, shares that ideal and is on the rise in neighbouring countries.
But, as Professor Conley added, companies are increasingly realizing that employees need to be disconnected from time to time and that "giving workers time to chill helps ultimate long-term productivity".
It seems that Ackman believes that one reason his big, concentrated bets didn't work out as planned was the growing popularity of indexing – the ultimate long-term investment strategy.
