Known in financial circles as the ‘smiling crocodile,’ Nelson Peltz is a legendary financier with a reputation for both charm and tenacity. As the father of Nicola Peltz Beckham, he is both respected and feared for his sharp business acumen.

Peltz embraces this formidable image. During a 2024 lunch with the Financial Times, when reminded of being labeled a ‘bully billionaire’ by Nicola’s former wedding planners, he chuckled and remarked, “That’s probably true. What’s the point of being a billionaire if you can’t be a bully?”

Currently, the Beckhams find themselves in a significant dispute with Peltz.

David and Victoria Beckham are wary of Peltz’s influence, suspecting him of financing legal and PR support for their estranged son Brooklyn and his wife, Nicola.

The Beckhams were taken aback by a lengthy 1,200-word Instagram post from Brooklyn last Monday, doubting that their son penned it himself.

The style, tone and construction all strike people in the Beckham camp as a long way from Brooklyn’s usual output. Brooklyn is a sweet young man who has been known to write ‘witch’ instead of ‘which’ on an Instagram post.

The business world of Nelson Peltz is far removed from the world of football, pop or Parisian fashion, but the Beckhams will surely have educated themselves about 83-year-old Peltz’s interests in the years since their son started dating his daughter.

Harvard Business School has used Peltz’s acquisition – then turnaround and sale – of the juice brand Snapple between 1997 and 2000 as a case study in strategic business brilliance.

In the City of London, he is known for an attack on the consumer goods giant Unilever, which owns brands including Dove soap, Radox and Hellmann’s mayonnaise. He has also laid siege to US corporations from Heinz and Mondelez (owners of Cadbury chocolate) to Disney and beauty giant Procter & Gamble.

Recently he led a $7.4billion (£5.37billion) takeover of the British pension fund manager Janus Henderson which was completed last month.

But what the Beckhams may not yet understand is the thoroughness and patience of Peltz, who has deep enough pockets to fund legal disputes over decades, and is used to getting his way.

Nicola Peltz Beckham’s father, billionaire Nelson Peltz, at a conference in 2013

Nelson Peltz, Elon Musk, Nicola Peltz Beckham and Brooklyn Beckham

The ‘smiling crocodile’ with his wife Claudia and daughter Nicola

 Nowhere is this clearer than in his 14-year legal fight over tax demands on his enormous house in upstate New York. High Winds, a 130-acre spread in Bedford, New York, used to belong to DeWitt Wallace of Reader’s Digest fame. 

Features include a flock of albino peacocks, a huge lake and waterfall, a two-hole golf course, helipad and a professional-quality indoor ice hockey rink. All of his eight children with second wife Claudia, including Nicola, have loved playing ice hockey.

Peltz bought it for $6million (£4.3million) 40 years ago. Estimates suggest it is now worth nearly $40million (£29million).

Peltz believes it’s far less than that. It can be revealed here that the figure which his expensive lawyers have arrived at is a mere $3million (£2.2million).

This matters because he has to pay annual taxes based on the valuation, and has thus been forking out nearly $3million (£2.2million) a year. He wants to reduce this to $300,000 (£219,000).

His blue-chip lawyers (which he shares with pal Donald Trump) have filed three petitions arguing against the figures set for the 2019, 2020 and 2021 tax years. There will be a conference to discuss the matter in December this year.

Previous to these complaints, Peltz filed petitions with Westchester Supreme Court against the assessments for the same property for the years 2011 to 2016. The town’s assessor valued his tax bill to be around $2.95million during these years, but Peltz argued it should be a tenth of this figure. Peltz lost and a judge ordered no reduction in tax.

A photo posted to Instagram by Nicola of her, Brooklyn and Nelson last year

Brooklyn’s parents, David and Victoria Beckham, in post to mark former footballer’s 50th birthday

Nelson and Claudia at an awards dinner in New York in 2011

Meanwhile, he contested the value of a neighbouring home he owned, bought from Mariah Carey in 1998. It burned down in 1999 and was never rebuilt. He asked for – and got – a reduction in its tax assessment value for the five years between 2011 and 2016. This saved him $845,000 (£612,000).

All of which means Peltz has filed eight petitions in 14 years, using his $3,000-an-hour lawyers… and saved $845,000. Well, you know what they say about millionaires always being the ones to pick up a penny from the floor.

There may be a cautionary tale in here for the Beckhams. There is certainly a contrast between the very wealthy but not-at-all-showy Peltzes, and the oh-so-flashy but far less wealthy Beckhams. The Sunday Times Rich List last year put the Beckhams’ wealth at £500million and it is mostly tied up in their private businesses.

The Peltzes, according to Fortune magazine, are worth $1.6billion, although some suspect this is a serious underestimate.

It’s a fortune built on smarts and hard work. As Peltz’s close friend, Australian golfer and entrepreneur Greg Norman, says: ‘Nelson isn’t a Harvard type. He’s street smart. He understands what the masses want.’

Peltz dropped out of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School in 1962 and instead built his family’s tiny frozen food business in Brooklyn, New York, into the largest frozen food distributor in the Northeast.

From there, he assembled the biggest packaging company in the world, Triangle Industries, which was sold in 1989, netting him $840million (£610million).

Around this point, he started to make big money from using debt to buy companies. He worked hand in glove with junk bond king Michael Milken in the ‘greed is good’ Wall Street era of the 1980s. Milken went to jail in 1991, serving 22 months for securities fraud and tax felonies.

 These days Peltz is best known for his turnaround campaigns at big consumer goods companies such as Mondelez, Heinz and Procter & Gamble. His company Trian will buy a stake in a company and agitate for improvements, often by seeking a board seat.

Peltz said: ‘We don’t leverage up, we don’t buy all this funny money crap, we buy old-fashioned stock and work it hard.

‘We’re there to help these companies . . . not to break them up for immediate gain and leave them lying by the road.’

His efforts to get a seat on the board of Disney failed after a proxy battle and he sold his shares in the company for $1billion (£730million) in May 2024.

There is a sense that Nelson’s robust business style was reflected in his children’s upbringing, where the importance of hard work was the cardinal virtue. Nicola recalls that he would tell her: ‘Nobody should work harder than you.’

Nelson Peltz said proudly: ‘My kids are exhausted every day and I keep them that way. It’s gym, ice hockey, homework. They’re too tired to get into trouble.’

Nicola’s brother Will, 39, recalled: ‘It was a zoo, to be honest. It was constant battles. My mom was pregnant for most of my childhood, and she’s chasing us around trying to split up fights with a huge stomach on her.’

In soppy beta male Brooklyn, Nicola has chosen her father’s exact opposite.

But, as she said mistily in an interview soon after they were married: ‘I love watching how he learns from my dad.’

How the Beckhams must regret not hearing the warning in that statement about what was to come.

Additional reporting: Chris White