The Pissing Contest That Is Nelson Peltz vs. Jeff Sonnenfeld

The Pissing Contest That Is Nelson Peltz vs. Jeff Sonnenfeld by Activist Stocks

Over the past couple of weeks, the Yale School of Management professor, Jeff Sonnenfeld, has been taking Trian Partners (specifically, its founder Nelson Peltz) to task over the fund’s performance. Part of the story is that Sonnenfeld has been trying to defend DuPont against Peltz, where the activist hedge fund has been waging a proxy battle in hopes of getting board seats and breaking the company up.

As part of that, Sonnenfeld has called into Trian and Peltz’s record of generating returns for investors, noting that Trian’s return in 2014 was just 8.8%, while the S&P 500 returned 13.7%. Nelson Peltz has responded by saying that...