Lashing back at critical comments from management expert Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, Trian Fund's Nelson Peltz said Thursday the Yale "professor should do a little bit more digging" and get his facts straight.
"I don't mind anybody coming after me as long as they're coming with facts," the activist investor said in an exclusive interview with CNBC's "Halftime Report." "He's a professor, I assume he's telling his students to do good work. His work was just a bit faulty."
Earlier Thursday on CNBC's "Squawk Box," Sonnenfeld said ordinary investors would do better putting their money into the stocks of the target companies than the investment firms on the attack. "Last year ... Trian came in at 8.8 percent return. The S&P was 13.7 percent," Sonnenfeld said. "That's just the facts,"
"If we were having this discussion ... 25 years ago we have many of the same people," Sonnenfeld added. "They were called sharks, raiders ... at that time."
Read MorePeltz vs Sonnenfeld over activist fund performance
Peltz said Sonnenfeld "twisted and cherry-picked the data to present a highly misleading and inaccurate picture of Trian's performance."
"Professor should do a little bit more digging and a little less bidding," Peltz said.
Peltz said activism is about building, fixing and running companies, not just buying and selling. He pointed to Trian's nine-year stint in Wendy's as an example. "Our holding period in stock is typically longer than a lot of mutual funds.'"