Welcome to the Arena from ICR – Conversations with Today's Innovators & Business Leaders

Ed Garden, Founder, Garden Investments (Part 1 of 2) – Sowing Seeds of Growth: Cultivating Success through Strategic Activist Investing

Nov 8, 2023

32:32

Today we're celebrating a big milestone for the show: It's our 100th episode of Welcome to the Arena and we're marking that huge achievement with a 2-part interview with an influential player in the investment world. Our guest today has had an incredible career and our conversation was packed with inspiring stories and insightful advice.

We're sitting down for part one of our interview with Ed Garden, Founder and CEO of Garden Investments. Prior to starting Garden Investments, Ed founded Trian Fund Management in 2005 with Nelson Peltz and Peter May. He was Chief Investment Officer at Trian until May of 2023, and presently serves as a senior advisor.

As Chief Investment Officer, Ed oversaw Trian's portfolio management, idea generation, and due diligence activities. He has extensive experience engaging with public company management teams and boards and currently serves on the board of General Electric. He previously served on the boards of Bank of New York Mellon, Family Dollar Stores, Invesco Janice Henderson Group, Pentair, The Wendy's Company and Triarc Companies earlier in his career. Ed worked at Credit Suisse First Boston as an investment banker and BT Alex Brown, where he was co-head of Equity Capital Markets. Ed has a BA in Economics from Harvard.

Highlights:

Ed's upbringing and the role of academia and education (3:17)
Getting into the job market, and Ed's first position in investment banking (6:18)
How Ed's work in banking influenced his path to starting an activist firm (10:20)
Early challenges Ed and his team faced when founding Trian (12:30)
The investment approach and strategy taken at Trian (16:05)
What made Trian's investment approach unique (17:28)
The relationship between capital allocation and capital governance in investing (22:36)
What CEOs don't understand about their company's value in the stock market (23:53)
How Ed "de-conglomerated" some companies (25:24)
What makes investment partnerships difficult in activist investing (28:44)

Links:

Trian Fund Management on LinkedIn

Trian Fund Management Website

Feedback:

If you have questions about the show, or have a topic in mind you'd like discussed in future episodes, email our producer, marion@lowerstreet.co.