The Sunday Times June 5, 2022 5
Peltz later settled down and now has
ten children — two from his first mar-
riage, to Cynthia Abrams, and eight from
his marriage to Claudia.
His daughter, Nicola, played hockey
and became an actress, appearing in
films such as Transformers: Age of Extinc-
tion. “I told Brooklyn Beckham, he defi-
nitely better watch out because she
played hockey and she was tough in the
corners,” Peltz said, chuckling.
In 2007, he turned his attention to Cad-
bury, taking a 4.5 per cent stake and suc-
cessfully lobbied for Cadbury to sell off its
drinks business.
Sir Roger Carr, chairman of Cadbury
from 2008 until it was sold to Kraft for
£11.5 billion in 2010, said Peltz was a mix-
ture of “roguish charm and a ruthless
determination to liberate value”.
After Cadbury was sold to Kraft, the
business was renamed Mondelez once it
had spun off its American grocery busi-
ness in 2012 — and after Trian had taken a
stake in 2011 and presented a list of its
demands to the company’s management.
Trian went on to build a stake in Mon-
delez, which owns Cadbury to this day,
and pushed for it to merge with PepsiCo.
He was granted a board seat on the condi-
tion he drop the campaign for a merger.I
n 2017, when Mondelez was looking
for a new chief executive, the board
wanted to hire Dirk Van de Put, at the
time boss of the Canadian frozen foods
manufacturer McCain. However, Peltz
was unconvinced. He insisted on flying
out to Miami, where Van de Put was
based, to meet him. They spent a day in
the Mandarin Oriental hotel where Peltz
quizzed him about his views on business.
Once Van de Put secured Peltz’s stamp of
approval, his appointment was agreed.
This meeting was to stand Van de Put
in good stead. In the early days of his
appointment, when Mondelez was ramp-
ing up marketing spending to grow
brands, Peltz threw his support behind
him — even making TV appearances to
back the company. “They will really go to
bat for you,” Van de Put said.
Executives at Unilever will be desper-
ate for Peltz to show them the same sup-
port. If he follows the same playbook at
Unilever as he did at Mondelez, there will
be a relentless focus on costs, and
whether the right people are in charge.
“He will put your nose to the facts and
say, ‘Make a decision here — what do you
want to do?’ And many people don’t like
that, of course,” said Van de Put.
He added that Unilever had “started
off in the right way” by inviting Peltz onto
the board. “Investors like that because
they know he will come with serious rec-
ommendations — that he will push for
them... I personally see that as a very
good thing for the company.”
Unilever’s chief executive Alan Jope,
58, is seeking to drag the company back
into investors’ good books after a back-
lash against its aborted approach for
Glaxo’s consumer division, now called
Haleon. Jope promised investors he
would not pursue any more deals, and
will cut 1,500 jobs along with overhauling
its management. Unilever is scrapping its
“matrix” structure, under which employ-
ees report to multiple bosses, and instead
streamlining into five operating units:
beauty and wellbeing; personal care;
home care; nutrition; and ice cream.
The company’s management alien-
ated many with the secret Glaxo talks and
has spent the past four months assidu-
ously listening to the demands of inves-
tors — who appear to be in support of
Peltz’s appointment. The shares jumped
almost 8 per cent after the announce-
ment that Peltz would be joining the
board, valuing the business at £94.5 bil-
lion. “The general consensus is that you
need 5-10 per cent at least to be consid-
ered [for a board seat], so my only guess
is that the shareholders of Unilever are
happy to use him as a lightning rod to stir
things up,” said a former executive of a
company targeted by Trian.
Bert Flossbach, founder of Flossbach
von Storch, a top-ten shareholder, said he
shared “the approach Nelson Peltz has
brought forward at other companies”.
“We think with Unilever as well, it is more
about constant improvements of brand
equity and execution, and it is less about
a big structural change like a large-scale
acquisition,” he added.
“There is now a group of investors
backing Unilever which is long-term-ori-
ented and constructive.”
Peltz was ultimately forced to give up
his noisy helicopter commute from Bed-
ford after neighbours won the court bat-
tle. However, his campaign at P&G sug-
gests he is unlikely to give up on Unilever
so easily. “At Trian, we believe we’re per-
forming a service — we’re getting compa-
nies to do better things,” he said.$1.6bn
Peltz’s estimated net worth$3bn
The stake that Trian built up
in Procter & GambleI never
wanted my
kids to see me
walking out
of the house
with a golf
bag on my
shoulder
1.5%
The stake built by Peltz in
the consumer goods giant£50bn
The value of Unilever’s
failed offer to GlaxoJust before dawn on March 11,
a ship pulled into the shallow
Russian port of Kavkaz,
nestled in a small bay in the
Black Sea. The Russian-
flagged Vladimir Monomakh
waited for a while before
another, the Greek-owned
Minerva Emily, arrived. After
it came alongside, the crew
carefully siphoned off the
Russian oil tanker’s cargo
onto the other 25,000-tonne
vessel.
Shipping analysts say this
“ship to ship” switch can have
the effect of disguising
Russian oil. By transferring
T
he Sikorsky helicopter used
by Nelson Peltz to commute
the 40 miles from his home in
Bedford, New York, to Man-
hattan in the late 1990s was so
noisy that neighbours said
their windows would rattle.
The town sued the billionaire
to stop him flying. But Peltz
dug in and clung on to his air-
craft during a five-year legal battle.
Now the tycoon and activist investor
has landed on Unilever’s lawn. The Dove-
soap owner said last week that Peltz, 79,
would join the board after building a
1.5 per cent stake in the troubled firm.
The announcement fired the starting gun
on what is likely to be a period of drastic
change at the FTSE 100 consumer goods
giant, already under pressure from inves-
tors after a failed £50 billion bid for Glaxo
Smith Kline’s consumer healthcare arm.
So far, Peltz has kept quiet. He is
known for successfully lobbying for a
break-up at Cadbury, and a
costly fight to shake up
Procter & Gamble after criti-
cising the owner of Head &
Shoulders shampoo for
creaking under “suffoca-
ting bureaucracy” and
“excessive costs”. In a
statement alongside his
appointment at Unilever,
he said only that it had
“significant potential”.
The most radical
move would be to force
a sale or demerger of
Unilever’s £50 billion
food and refreshments
division, which includes
brands such as Hell-
mann’s. Peltz gave one
clue to his thinking when
he spoke to The Sunday
Times in a video call last
week, hinting that the num-
ber of “corporate” head-of-
fice jobs could go under the
microscope. “At Trian [his
investment fund], we believe that
just about everybody should be
part of somebody’s P&L [profit and
loss],” he said. “Huge amounts of
people in corporate is an L.”
Peltz has been a fixture in gossip
columns since his daughter, Nicola,
27, married David Beckham’s son
Brooklyn, 23, in April in a multimil-
lion-dollar ceremony at the family’s
seafront estate in Florida. The bill
for the event — attended by celebri-
ties including Serena and Venus
Williams, Eva Longoria and Gordon
Ramsay — was met by Peltz’s esti-
mated $1.6 billion (£1.3 billion) for-
tune, built from stakes in Cadbury,
Tiffany & Co and PepsiCo. But awayfrom the celebrity headlines, Peltz, mar-
ried to former model Claudia Heffner (no
relation to Hugh Hefner), has built a repu-
tation as a fearsome adversary. He has
pushed for companies to break up or sell
off divisions, and often demands a seat
on the board.
At Procter & Gamble, where Trian built
a $3 billion stake, he waged a high-profile
and costly proxy battle. He later said that
P&G had wasted $100 million fighting his
attempt to get on the board — the “dumb-
est thing I’ve ever been involved in”. At
the burger chain Wendy’s, he success-
fully agitated for it to sell the Canadian
coffee chain Tim Hortons, and earlier this
year, Peltz and his business partner Peter
May were given board seats at asset man-
ager Janus Henderson. A former execu-
tive at a company targeted by Peltz
described him as “polite but very aggres-
sive”. Peltz likes to say he is “there to
help”.B
orn in Brooklyn, Peltz gave up a
place at business school in 1962 and
joined the family food-distribution
business, which he set about
expanding through acquisitions. In
1972, Peltz and his brother took the com-
pany, Flagstaff, public.
Peltz credits his father, Maurice, who
began work at 4.30am each day to catch
the early-produce markets, for his work
ethic. “I never wanted my kids to see me
walking out of the house with a golf bag,”
he told The Sunday Times. His father also
kept overhead costs low so that it was
hard for competitors to compete with
him on price. Peltz has copied this prac-
tice: even the coffee cups at Trian’s offi-
ces say, “Sales up, expenses down”.
By the 1980s, Peltz was on his way to
building his next fortune, doing lever-
aged buyouts with high-yield bonds
financed by the notorious financier Mich-
ael Milken. At the same time as he was
building a business empire, he was rack-
ing up appearances on the Hollywood
party circuit — and a playboy reputation.
A 1988 book about corporate raiders
claimed that Peltz and a friend had once
got four women to play a topless doubles
tennis match in which they were the only
spectators — a claim he has since denied.
Before he settled down, he was linked to
the actresses Victoria Principal and
Diana Rigg. “In the Seventies, I did
women.” he has been quoted as saying of
his partying days.
Even today, he insists on staying at Cla-
ridge’s when in London on business, sug-
gesting he is the Mayfair hotel’s “oldest
living client”. “The first time I stayed at
Claridge’s was June 1964. That was my
first trip to London. It was a little outside
my budget, I was only there for two
nights, but I had to try this place that
everybody was going to see.”Nelson’s
armada
sails in to
Unilever
Activist Nelson Peltz has
lived a high-octane life of
parties, helicopters and
corporate raids. With
another FTSE giant in his
sights, he talks tactics with
Sabah Meddings
NELSON PELTZ:
HITS AND MISSESIn 2006, Trian launched a
battle to shake-up Heinz,
going on to win two board
seats.
6 In 2013, Heinz was sold
to Berkshire Hathaway
and 3G Capital, in a
$28 billion deal.
l2014 — Trian becomes
fourth-largest shareholder
in Cadbury-owner
Mondelez with a 2.3 per
cent stake, and agitates
for a merger with PepsiCo.
He is granted a board seat
on condition he gives up
on the merger.
lIn October 2015, Trian
revealed a $2.5 billion
stake in General Electric,
and later sold a third of his
position when the shares
rose. However, the stock
later plummeted and Peltz
said it was a “big mistake”
that he did not sell his
entire position. Trian later
installed Ed Garden,
Peltz’s son-in-law, to the
board. Peltz told CNBC of
the investment: “We make
a mistake about once
every 25 years. So you
guys can relax, for another
22 years.”
lIn October 2018, Trian
took a stake in PPG, the
manufacturer of paints
and coatings. Peltz
wanted PPG to sell off its
coatings business, but the
business decided to keep
it together and Trian sold
out its investment in 2019.
lIn June 2019, Trian
announces an investment
in Ferguson, a London-
listed distributor of
plumbing and heating in
North America. Later that
year, Ferguson said it
would de-merge its UK
operators to become
Wolseley UK, and its chief
executive resigned. In
January last year, Wolseley
UK was sold to private
equity for $420 million.Nelson Peltz,
with his wife and
daughter (middle
picture), found
himself back on
the A-list with
Nicola’s marriage
to Brooklyn
Beckham. In the
1980s, he had a
celebrity image
of his owntarget in 2013 when his then-
33-year-old son, Andreas-
Ioannis, was kidnapped from
his car by two armed men.
Other billionaire
shipowners, such as Tate
Modern benefactor George
Economou, have been
sending fleets directly to
Russian ports, rather than
resorting to ship-to-ship
transfers. Data from Lloyd’srespond to requests for
comment.
The significant increase in
insurance costs for going to
the Black Sea has meant
shippers still willing to make
the journey, such as
Economou, will charge hefty
fees. “Yara”, a shipping
consultant and former oil
trader, who did not wish to
reveal her surname, said:
“That premium will be
collected by the ship owners
who will take the risk and
need to buy the insurance.”
At its April peak, the day rate
for shipping Russian crude
reached $350,000, compared
with just $6,000 in February.
While Economou is not
accused of any wrongdoing,
the European Union believes
that the oil trade is helping
bolster the Russian military
campaign.List shows that ships owned
by the Athens-born
businessman transported
1.9 million tonnes from four
Russian ports in April.
Economou, 68, who is
worth more than $1.5 billion,
has owned a variety of
shipping companies listed in
New York. His latest venture,
TMS Tankers, contains a fleet
of 50 ships that can carry
from 100,000 to 300,000
tonnes of oil, several of which
were tracked carrying crude
out of those Russian ports.
Last week, The Sunday
Times, using data from the
MarineTraffic website,
tracked an Economou ship,
the Bordeira, on its voyage
from Novorossiya to India,
which has increased its
imports of Russian oil by
nearly tenfold since the start
of the war. Economou did nottransfers each day in May — a
20 per cent rise in a month.
Michelle Wiese Bockmann,
energy and shipping analyst
at the journal Lloyd’s List,
said these transfers were a
“tried and tested way of
ensuring that the destination
and origin of the cargoes are
not widely known”.
“This is a very unusual
pattern of shipping — usually
ships go from point A to point
B,” she added.
Andreas Martinos, owner
of Minerva Marine, is one of a
clutch of Greek billionaires
who have been making big
sums moving Russian oil
since the war in Ukraine
began.
Minerva did not try to mask
its activities, and there is no
suggestion of wrongdoing
under current sanctions
rules; the transfer was easilytracked by data analysts
Refinitiv.
However, incidents of
Russian ships “going dark” by
switching off their tracking
devices has tripled since the
invasion.
Analysts say traders will try
to mask the origins of Russian
oil for reputational reasons,
given the war in Ukraine,
even though trading it is still
legal. But that legality will
soon be disrupted. The EU
has agreed to levy partial
sanctions on Russia’s oil
exports by the end of the
year.
With the war sending oil
prices to $119 a barrel, even as
the big, established players
quit the Russian market,
incentives are high for others
to take their place.
Amrita Sen at energy
consultancy Energy Aspectsthe cargo to the Minerva,
which is owned by a Greek
shipping tycoon and flies the
Maltese flag, the origin of the
oil may be hidden.
The Minerva transported
the oil to Greek waters, more
than 1,200 miles away — from
where it was destined for
export across the world to
buyers who could be
unaware of its origins.
She would return to the
area two weeks later to carry
out a similar ship-to-ship
manoeuvre with the rusty red
SANAR-7, another Russian oil
tanker.
Data obtained by The
Sunday Times shows that
ship-to-ship transfers at
Kavkaz have risen almost ten-
fold since Russia’s invasion.
Greek waters have also
become a hotspot, with the
port of Kalamata seeing twoGreek shipping tycoons profit by moving Russia’s oil
War presents new
openings for ship
owners, writes
Laith Al-Khalaf
Oil was siphoned
from the
Russian-flagged
Vladimir
Monomakh to
the Greek-owned
Minerva Emily in
the Russian port
of Kavkazsaid a plethora of new
entrants were now
dominating the trade.
While the crisis has created
a new group of shippers
looking for a quick buck, it
has also enriched Greece’s
established shipping tycoons,
such as Martinos, who was
already said to be worth
$1.5 billion (£1.2 billion).
His wealth made him a