Updated, 3:22 p.m. | Despite a public scolding from George Clooney, the hedge fund manager Daniel S. Loeb does not have too many regrets about his activist investment strategy.
“I can’t think of a time in our experience where we misstepped,” Mr. Loeb told an audience at DealBook’s Opportunities for Tomorrow Conference on Tuesday, during which he spoke to the DealBook columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin. “I think there probably will be at some point in our life.”
Mr. Loeb, who runs Third Point, also disclosed a stake in FedEx.
Mr. Loeb pressed unsuccessfully to have the Sony Corporation to spin off 20 percent of its United States-based entertainment assets into a publicly traded entity. Mr. Loeb criticized the film studio’s profitability and transparency, earning him a public admonition from Mr. Clooney, who compared Mr. Loeb’s strategy to Walmart’s strangling businesses in a small town.
“Sounds a little hyperbolic,” Mr. Loeb said after listening to Mr. Sorkin read part of Mr. Clooney’s interview in August with the online trade publication Deadline Hollywood. “He obviously got a little worked up about our role,” Mr. Loeb said, adding that he would love to one day meet the actor to discuss the issue.
“I think we probably agree more than we disagree about the company,” Mr. Loeb said.
While Mr. Loeb admitted his push to break off a piece of Sony “failed,” he applauded the company’s pledge for more transparency and focus on profitability in its film and television operations.
“I don’t see that as being pushed back at all,” Mr. Loeb said. “In fact I see that as a great outcome for us.”
Mr. Loeb also told the anecdote of a hedge fund manager who took $50,000 out of a bank around the time of the financial crisis because he was concerned there wouldn’t be cash in the ATMs.
While he declined to name the subject of that anecdote, Mr. Loeb did touch on a dispute with another hedge fund investor, William A. Ackman, who has criticized Mr. Loeb’s investment in Herbalife, the nutritional supplements company that Mr. Ackman has described as a pyramid scheme.
“I have a fiduciary duty to my investors, not Bill Ackman,” Mr. Loeb said.