Meet the family of billionaire Nelson Peltz: From Brooklyn Peltz Beckham's wife to a former pro-hockey player, here's everything we know about his 10 kids
Billionaire investor Nelson Peltz has 10 children, including eight with wife Claudia Heffner Peltz.
His children have made their mark in business, acting, and fashion.
While some of his children are more well-known, like his daughter Nicola, others are more private.
Nelson Peltz
Before 80-year-old Nelson Peltz amassed his $1.4 billion net worth or family of 10 children, he was a college dropout working for his family business.
"I was quite bored at Wharton," he told Bloomberg in July about his college experience. "I felt that was the wrong place. What I really wanted to do was ski."
After some time as a "ski bum," he moved back home, working for his family's food-distribution company — and investing on the side using his bar mitzvah money and some contributions from family and friends, per Bloomberg.
By 1973, he'd grown the family business and taken it public, Bloomberg reported, and more than two decades later, in 2005, he cofounded his activist investment firm, Trian Fund Management. The firm has an estimated $8.5 billion in assets under management including stakes, Forbes reported.
As an activist investor, Peltz takes large equity stakes in companies that aren't performing well and helps them make changes to improve their business.
"We see companies that were once great but have lost their way, and we have a plan for them to get back to greatness again," Peltz said in the Bloomberg interview. "We're not there to do all the terrible things that typically go along with the term 'activist.' We're just trying to get these companies to operate better, the way they used to."
He serves as the non-executive chairperson of the Wendy's Corporation and was recently involved in a proxy fight with Walt Disney Co.
According to a 1964 wedding announcement in The New York Times, Peltz's first wife was Cynthia Abrams, who attended Boston University. The pair got married at the Plaza Hotel and went on to have two children whose identities have been kept private.
Peltz is now married to the former model Claudia Heffner Peltz, who has mostly kept out of the limelight during marriage.
Together, the couple share eight children: Will, Brad, Brittany, Matthew, Diesel, Nicola, Zachary, and Gregory.
Recently, Peltz made headlines for suing the planners of his daughter Nicola's 2022 wedding to Brooklyn Beckham, Insider's Claire Atkinson reported. In the court filings, the billionaire investor alleges he was "hoodwinked" and asked for the planner to return his six-figure deposit plus legal fees.
Insider did not receive responses to requests for comment from Nelson Peltz's company, Trian Fund Management, Brad Peltz, and a representative for Will Peltz and Nicola Peltz Beckham.
Matthew Peltz
Matthew Peltz's ascent in the world of finance is arguably a product of his father's corporate legacy.
The 30-something-year-old son of Nelson Peltz and Claudia Peltz attended Yale University and began working at Goldman Sachs as an investment-banking analyst the day after he graduated in May 2006, according to Forbes. In January 2008, Matthew left Goldman to join his father's investment fund, Trian.
As a partner at Trian, he managed portfolio companies such as discount chain Family Dollar, whose shares jumped under his reign, Forbes reported.
In 2013, at 29 years old, he made it on to the Forbes 30 under 30 list for finance.
From 2012 to 2015, Matthew served as a director at Arby's. He then took on the same role at the fast-food chain Wendy's — into which Trian has poured money — the company's website says. Since November 2021, he's served as its vice chairman.
His business moves have paid off nicely: In 2020, Matthew purchased a waterfront mansion in Gulf Stream, Florida, for $10.5 million, the South Florida Business Journal reported. The 10,154-square-foot home includes six bedrooms, seven bathrooms, three half-bathrooms, a pool, a dock, an office, a massage room, and an exercise room, per the South Florida Business Journal.
Will Peltz
Will Peltz is a model and actor who has appeared in films including "Sierra Burgess Is a Loser," "Time Freak," and "Unfriended."
He's also walked the runway for Philipp Plein and Zadig & Voltaire and shot campaigns with brands like Calvin Klein and Armani.
"It's a lot more intimidating than your traditional acting roles," Will Peltz told Vogue about runway modeling. "You only have around 30 seconds or so to get it right. You have to make your walk convincing and make the clothes look damn good — but it's so gratifying when you're off the catwalk."
A representative for Will Peltz did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.
Brad Peltz
Brad Peltz is a former professional ice-hockey player for the Ottawa Senators. He was drafted by the team in 2009, according to his LinkedIn, and played from August 2012 to April 2013.
He attended Yale University from 2011 to 2015 and graduated with a degree in political science, per his LinkedIn. In 2016, he founded a startup called Mymo, which is an automated scheduling platform for patients and doctors.
In his LinkedIn profile, Brad Peltz said he's a "patient with a chronic illness" and wrote that he "founded Mymo after multiple extended hospital stays, which showed numerous fractures in the healthcare delivery continuum."
It's unclear if the company is still in business.
Brittany Peltz Buerstedde
Brittany Peltz Buerstedde has worn many hats throughout her career.
As a child, she wanted to become a competitive ice skater, Aventura Magazine reported. But after getting injured, she began pursuing a career in the arts.
She studied at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, worked at the Gagosian Gallery as an intern, and eventually became a fashion designer who launched a children's clothing line inspired by her family's summers in the South of France, per WWD.
In 2014, Brittany married Franz-Ferdinand Buerstedde, the managing director of Rhône Capital, a private-equity firm, per Aventura. They have four children — Eva Leah, Lila Rae, Indy Moon, and Phoenix Blu — according to her Instagram.
Brittany's family lived in a high-rise in lower Manhattan for some time, but when the pandemic hit, they relocated to a gated community in Miami close to the Design District.
"The energy in the city felt off, and I didn't feel safe sending my kids out," she told Aventura.
The couple also bought a waterfront lot in Miami for $10.8 million in 2021, The Real Deal reported, though its unclear if they built a house there.
She is now the founder and creative director of Sena Lifestyle Studio, an interior-design studio that blends elements of wellness and spirituality, Haute Living reported.
She credits her strong family values to her upbringing.
"I loved my upbringing and am so grateful to have the most incredible parents, who taught me that family and love are, above all, most important," Peltz told Aventura.
Diesel Peltz
Diesel Peltz's entrepreneurial journey began thanks to his father.
After dropping out of New York University in 2015, he took a leap of faith in to cofound the company Twenty, a mobile app which seeks to eliminate FOMO (fear of missing out) by alerting users where their friends are so they can meet up.
Nelson backed the startup in its initial rounds of seed funding, Forbes reported, as did DJ Khaled, who told Forbes that tech that facilitates social interaction is "going to be the next big thing."
Getting the app on the market took years, according to Forbes. Peltz started off by testing a beta version at multiple college campuses, Forbes reported, but he said that he didn't feel pressure to turn a profit right away.
The app officially launched in 2019. Later that year, it merged with Mappen, a social-media platform for location tracking, per Forbes. That same year, Diesel ended up on Forbes' 30 under 30 list for consumer technology.
Diesel has also cofounded and is the CEO of Healthy Together, the firm behind the health-tech app of the same name, according to Crunchbase.
Despite the advantages of coming from a wealthy family, Nelson said in a Q&A with Thrive Global that "most days are filled with a set of small failures and successes," though he did not specify what those were.
Nicola Peltz Beckham
Nicola Peltz Beckham, 28, is an actress who's had roles in "Bates Motel," "Transformers: Age of Extinction," and "Avatar the Last Airbender."
But she's perhaps better known as Brooklyn Peltz Beckham's other half. She married the son of the soccer legend David Beckham and the former Spice Girl and fashion designer Victoria Beckham last year. The pair's wedding took place at the Peltz family estate in Palm Beach, which was purchased in 1987 for $18 million, according to the South Florida Sun Sentinel.
The couple's nuptials made the news more recently because of Nelson Peltz's lawsuit against Plan Design Events, a Florida-based party-planning company that was hired to organize the affair. He is suing for $159,000 plus legal fees, hoping to recoup his deposit that ended up being nonrefundable after the family moved on to a different planner at the last minute.
Like some of her brothers, Nicola played ice hockey when she was younger. She told Coveteur that her dad had "really wanted me to focus on playing ice hockey," but when she was 11, she asked her mom if she could try acting.
"It started because I loved my drama class," she told Coveteur. "My parents were very against it [at first]. They didn't get it. We lived an hour away from Manhattan, and I convinced my mom to bring me to one manager."
She added that she ended up booking her very first audition for a play called "Blackbird" at Manhattan Theatre Club.
A representative for Nicola did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.
Zachary and Gregory Peltz
Zachary and Gregory Peltz were born in February 2003 to Nelson and Claudia. The 20-year-olds stay mostly out of the spotlight and on the ice.
According to the hockey-statistics site Elite Prospects, Zachary spent the 2021-2022 season as part of an AAA team, the highest level of youth hockey, at Mount St. Charles Academy, while Gregory currently plays for a second-tier team, the Boston Jr. Bruins.
Both men appear to have a close relationship with their older sister Nicola and her famous husband, social-media posts indicate. In 2016, their father threw them an extravagant bar mitzvah that had stilt walkers, two bands, five singers, a hockey rink, basketball hoop, and video games. according to Page Six.
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