A legendary corporate raider and activist investor, Peltz is the colorful billionaire who has presided over the leveraged buyout vehicle Triarc and the hedge fund Trian.

Brooklyn-born Peltz is that rarest of creatures: a dropout from the Wharton School. No matter: He did it to run his family's Brooklyn-based frozen-food business, which he later sold for an $8 million profit. After hooking up with junk bond king Michael Milken in the 1980s, Peltz turned the company Triangle Industries into the biggest packaging company in the world thanks to the acquisitions of National Can Co. and American Can, collecting a $830 million windfall in the process. He may be best known, though, for acquiring Snapple from Quaker Oats for $300 million in the 1990s and reviving the moribund brand, before unloading it three years later to Cadbury Schweppes for $1.45 billion. These days Peltz does his work through the hedge fund Trian while also acting as a non-executive chairman of the Board of The Wendy's Company and a director of H.J. Heinz Company and Legg Mason, Inc.

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