Nelson Peltz with daughter Nicola Peltz, who is marrying Brooklyn Becham
(Picture: Instagram/Nicola Peltz)Billionaire Nelson Peltz is used to interesting meetings. Still, the first sitdown with his daughter’s soon-to-be in-laws must have stood out.
Victoria and David Beckham flew out to meet the Peltzes at their 44,000sq-ft Floridian mansion over Christmas. The house will soon host Nicola Peltz’s wedding to Brooklyn Beckham.
Of course, the rendezvous took place on the elder Peltz’s territory: the 79-year-old founder of Trian Fund Management is used to getting his way. The activist investor has made a career out of driving change — often forcefully — at firms he invests in, including Heinz and Procter & Gamble. Doing so has made Peltz a personal fortune of $1.7 billion.
Now, he is active in London. He is quietly stake-building at under-fire Unilever, the owner of brands ranging from Ben & Jerry’s and Marmite to Dove soap and Axe deoderant.
Peltz’s likes to tell CEOs how to run their businesses. Or, as Trian’s website puts it, he works as a “highly engaged shareowner”. He has been honing his methods for decades. Mostly, he gets it right and the company flourishes.
News of Peltz’s Unilever position emerged in the aftermath of its flunked £50 billion bid for GlaxoSmithKline’s consumer health arm. Unilever shares shot up 6% after Peltz arrived, such is the strength of his reputation.
One of his first high-profile deals was Snapple, which Quaker Oats bought for $1.7 billion in 1993 before selling to Peltz’s Triarc Beverages four years later for $300 million. Peltz sold the business to Cadbury Schweppes for more than $1 billion just three years later. Harvard Business School asked: “What did Triarc do with such apparently effortless grace that Quaker, with all its resources, could not?”
Since then, Peltz has grappled with giants including Heinz, Wendy’s and Procter & Gamble, where chief executive David Taylor lost the most expensive board seat battle in US corporate history. Shares in P&G have almost doubled since Trian’s investment.
In 2006, the tycoon invited Heinz’s then-boss Bill Johnson for steakhouse dinner. He is said to have spent the meal moaning about hard-to- open ketchup sachets, before shocking Johnson with the announcement: “I’m going on your board!” Johnson later said: “It wasn’t a cordial meeting.”
But Peltz joined, and stayed there until 2013 when Heinz was bought by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway in a $28 billion deal. Peltz also played a part in Kraft gobbling up Cadbury and then its spin-off into Mondelez.
He doesn’t always succeed: an attempt to lure PepsiCo to buy Mondelez, or to split up its snacks and drinks businesses, fell flat.
His intentions with Unilever are unclear but analysts speculate he could push for sell-offs or perhaps even a split. Unilever boss Alan Jope won’t say whether he’s talked with Peltz.
Peltz’s teenage self would be surprised by his success. He dropped out of university to devote himself to skiing but was sidetracked by what was meant to be a temporary job at his father’s small food business.
“I saw all the opportunities and all the mistakes everybody was making,” Peltz told an interview. “My father said, ‘If you don’t like it, why don’t you change it?’”
Peltz and his brother eventually turned the $2.5-million firm into a $150-million listed frozen food business. They then used more than $1 billion in junk bond debt to construct the biggest packaging company in the world, Triangle Industries, before selling it for around $840 million in 1989. Then came corporate fame thanks to the lucrative reinvention of Snapple.
“I don’t know that I’ve achieved anything that spectacular,” he has said. “I don’t know if just making money is a great achievement.”
A reformed Trump supporter, nowadays Peltz paints himself as a family man. He has been married three times, although he’s been with the mother of eight of his 10 children, Claudia Heffner Peltz, for the past three decades.
All eyes are now on April’s wedding between Nicola and Brooklyn Beckham. But wedding bells won’t stop this laser-eyed investor focusing on Unilever’s every move. If history repeats itself, he could be on Unilever’s board come the nuptials in April. Maybe Ben & Jerry’s will be served as a wedding day dessert.
