Nelson Peltz has left the building. Well, the Legg Mason [profile] board room, anyway.

Last night the Baltimore-based mutual fund shop revealed that Peltz, the 72-year-old CEO and founding partner of Trian Fund Management, resigned from the Legg Mason board effective immediately. Yet it sounds like Trian, Legg Mason's biggest shareholder at 11.3 percent, is not going anywhere just yet.

"Investment funds managed by Trian continue to be a large shareholder of Legg Mason and we currently expect to remain an engaged shareholder for the foreseeable future," Peltz states.

The Baltimore Business Journal, the Financial Times, Reuters, and the Wall Street Journal all covered the news.

Three years after joining Legg Mason's board, Peltz helped push out the fund firm's then-CEO, Mark Fetting, and install Fetting's successor, Joe Sullivan, who remains in charge. Indeed, Peltz praises Legg Mason "under Joe Sullivan's leadership" as "positioned for future success."

And indeed, Peltz has a cause to smile. Since he joined the Legg Mason board five years ago, the nearly-100-percent gain in its stock price is roughly equal to the S&P 500's gains. Yet since Fetting's departure two years ago Legg Mason's stock price has more than doubled, against the S&P 500's gains of about 40 percent.

Peltz had chaired Legg Mason's nominating and corporate governance committee. The fund firm says he is leaving "to devote more time to other commitments, including service on current and future boards." (Though Peltz is not taking Trian's newest board seat; this morning BNY Mellon revealed that another Trian co-founder, Ed Garden, is joining the bank's board of directors.) 

Edited by: Neil Anderson, Managing Editor


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