Wall Street Journal: https://www.wsj.com/finance/investing/nelson-peltz-disney-trian-hedge-fund-216ba647
New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/16/business/media/peltz-disney-proxy.html
Key Takeaways:
- Trian Partners faces investor exodus and internal tensions, with assets dropping from $12.5 billion in 2015 to $10 billion.
- Engaged in a costly Disney proxy fight for board seats, spending an estimated $25 million over 2 board seats with the support of controversial figures like Ike Perlmutter.
- Nelson Peltz's leadership style and family dynamics within Trian underscore the firm's current crossroads and future prospects.
Investor Exodus and Internal Tensions: Nelson Peltz faced significant challenges as investors withdrew hundreds of millions of dollars due to underperformance. This period of difficulty coincided with internal tensions, particularly around the roles of Peltz's sons within the firm. Matt Peltz joined Trian in 2008, and another son, Diesel, joined more recently after attempting to launch a mobile app. Brad Peltz, a former professional hockey player, is involved with Wendy’s, a longstanding investment by Trian. The firm's assets under management dropped from around $12.5 billion in 2015 to approximately $10 billion, including over $2 billion worth of Disney shares for a proxy fight effort.
Mr. Peltz yearns for something that continues to elude him: the respect from the corporate elite, which he craves and feels he deserves. Could admittance to the inner sanctum of one of the best-known and most respected companies in the world — the Walt Disney Company — deliver that? He hates being mentioned in the same company as a rogues’ gallery of activists, buyout operators and corporate raiders, as he often is. He thinks he should be compared to someone he admires and tries to emulate: Warren E. Buffett.
“Does Nelson feel misunderstood? He probably does,” said Arthur Winkleblack, who was chief financial officer at Heinz when Mr. Peltz waged a successful proxy contest there in 2006 and joined the board. “Not all activists are the same. There are activists who are not nice people. There are activists who are.”
Whatever label is attached to him, there’s little chance that Mr. Peltz will be embraced by the august members of the Business Roundtable, the Washington-based lobbying group of elite chief executives, given his long track record of public criticism of boards and chief executives, and his efforts, when rebuffed, to elbow his way into America’s boardrooms.
Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase and a former chairman of the roundtable, recently came out against Mr. Peltz in the Disney proxy fight, citing the disruption that activist investors can bring to a board. One measure of Mr. Peltz’s continuing notoriety is the reluctance of many people who have worked with him to speak on the record — even people he counts as friends and admirers, some of whom he recommended The Times interview for this article. That’s especially true in the midst of the Disney fight; several people said they didn’t want to be caught in the crossfire between Mr. Peltz and Mr. Iger, let alone Mr. Dimon. Both chief executives cast long shadows in the entertainment and business worlds.
“He’s like the uninvited guest who crashes a dinner party,” said Charles Elson, director of the John L. Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance at the University of Delaware. “No matter how charming, he’s not going to be welcome.”
