Trian Fund Management is run by Nelson Peltz, who is known for having earned a high hedge fund manager salary. Trian’s primary focus is value investing in publicly traded stocks.

In 2011, Trian acquired a stake in Family Dollar Stores and announced that it wanted to take it private. But this offer was rejected by management.

Trian Gets Its Start
The seeds of Trian were planted a long time ago, back in 1984. Peltz controlled Triangle Industries and used it to take over National Can. Triangle was much smaller than National, but it received a lot of help (and financing) from junk bond king Michael Milken.

Later another of Peltz’s vehicles Triarc acquired the fast food chain, Wendy’s. It was renamed Wendy’s Arby’s Group and floated on the NYSE.

So based on the names of his companies, one might surmise that Peltz is fascinated with “tri” or perhaps the number three.

Peltz doesn’t just buy and sell stocks, but he is known to get involved with the underlying businesses that he purchases. He isn’t afraid to get his hands dirty and he works hard to make sure that they perform to their full potential.

The Best Advice Peltz Received
Peltz says that the best advice he ever received was from his father, who told him to work on increasing sales, while keeping expenses under control. This advice of course makes a lot of sense, but the real difficulty is not in understanding it, but in implementing it. Everyone, well almost every business, is trying to do this but not every business is succeeding at this task. But when they do succeed, shareholders and investors do very well.

After buying Snapple in 1997, Peltz had it focus on delis and pizza joints and this singular focus reignited growth in sales. As sales rose, Peltz made sure that expenses were tightly contained. This caused margins to grow and the value of his investment in Snapple to increase.

His shrewd investing and business acumen has allowed Peltz to generate a net worth that is in excess of $5B, which is quite a tidy sum of money. Peltz has homes in New York, Paris and Palm Beach. His Palm Beach house is reputed to be one of the most expensive houses in the United States. All this is not bad for Peltz, who like Bill Gates, was a college drop out. He started college at Wharton, but never finished. Perhaps getting a degree wasn’t as important as getting started on building his fortune.