Chuck Feeney's generosity towards Ireland is revealed in the final extract from a new biography by Conor O'Clery
Chuck Feeney, a blue-collar Irish-American from New Jersey, co-founded the first chain of duty free shops in the Asia Pacific, just as the Japanese tourism boom was starting in the 1960s. By the 1980s his company, Duty Free Shoppers, had become the biggest retail chain in the world, and Feeney was listed in Forbes as one of the richest 25 Americans. Forbes was wrong however. Feeney had by then transferred his vast fortune, irrevocably, in its totality and in secret, to his charitable foundation in Bermuda, a unique act in the history of philanthropy. Until recently his giving has also been secretive: beneficiaries were simply informed that the money was coming from a group of anonymous wealthy Americans. So far Feeney's foundation, Atlantic Philanthropies, has made donations worldwide amounting to $4 billion and it will spend down the remaining $4 billion in the next decade. He has directed more than $1 billion to the island of Ireland alone. Time magazine said he may be the most generous American giver of all time. Noted for his frugality - he wears a plastic watch and flies economy class - Feeney, 76, has co-operated in his biography now, primarily to promote giving while living among the very wealthy.
The Feeneys left Bermuda after the creation of the Atlantic Foundation.
Danielle disliked the country so much that she vowed never to set foot there again. In 1985, Chuck and Danielle moved the family home to London.
Feeney wanted to use the English capital as his base for running the multinational company known as General Atlantic Group Ltd on behalf of the philanthropy. He owned neither, but he still effectively controlled both. For the first years after he created the Atlantic Foundation, Chuck Feeney had been happy to see almost all of its giving focused on the United States, and on the university that had given him such a wonderful base for his business life. But he kept an open mind about other locations for his initiatives. He spent much of his time after the move to London reading, asking questions, and looking for fresh opportunities for both making money and giving it away.
A chance invitation brought Chuck Feeney to Ireland. Shortly after he moved to London, a friend of Tony Pilaro's sent him a brochure that he had come across. It appealed to Irish and Irish American investors to join an 80-member consortium with the intent of buying and upgrading Ashford Castle, a 700-year-old stately home converted into a luxury hotel on the shores of Lake Corrib in County Mayo. The brochure arrived with a tongue-in-cheek note saying, "This is something no self-respecting Italian American would get involved in, but might interest you." Once the home of the Guinness family, the hotel was a favourite with American celebrity visitors. John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara had stayed there during the shooting of John Ford's The Quiet Man in 1952, and President Ronald Reagan had spent a night during a presidential visit to Ireland in May 1984.
Like most Irish Americans, Feeney had a sentimental attraction to the land of his ancestors. St Patrick's Day was always a big event in the Feeney household. He joked to his children that he was descended from a dethroned "high king of Ireland". He did some research into his family history and established that his grandmother on his father's side came from a tiny rural district called Larganacarran in County Fermanagh in Northern Ireland.
He carried in his wallet a "Thornsticks" card, stating he was an Irish American, passionately proud of Irish culture and customs but "without publicity, fanfare, or personal reward". He first took Danielle and the children to Ireland back in 1971. They stayed at Dromoland Castle Hotel in County Clare. They remember tears trickling down his face as he listened to a harpist play melancholy Irish melodies. He considered buying film director John Huston's Georgian manor house near Craughwell in the west of Ireland as another family home, but the price was too high.
The more he reconnected with Ireland, the more Feeney became convinced that Irish Americans like himself should be doing more to help. In the 1980s, the economy of the Republic of Ireland was moribund. One in five adults was out of work. Three out of four graduates were leaving the country as soon as they qualified. A British newspaper columnist described Ireland as a Third World country but for the climate, and many Irish agreed and emigrated. In Northern Ireland the bloody conflict known as The Troubles was raging without any sign of a resolution.
The offer to buy into Ashford Castle Hotel seemed a useful entry point, if only because the other co-owners were moneyed people and might share his interest in doing something for Ireland. It was Feeney's way of familiarizing himself with a culture: Before he invested General Atlantic money, he would find a "perch" to get a feel for the place, and he understood the hotel business. The consortium bought Ashford Castle for $7 million in 1985, of which Feeney paid $70,000. He induced Paul Hannon, and Joe Lyons from DFS, also to buy a stake each. Chuck, Danielle, and the children flew to Shannon airport and crowded into a rented Volkswagen van to drive to the hotel for a short stay. Typically, Chuck found himself helping the manager of Ashford Castle to organize the hotel shop.
Most of the co-owners in the Ashford consortium seemed more interested in playing golf and salmon fishing than anything else. If he was to get involved, Feeney needed somebody with a knowledge of the country to survey the landscape for him and suggest investment ideas, and better still if there was a Cornell connection. He found such a person in Padraig Berry, a young, intense Irishman who had gone to Cornell Hotel School on a $20,000 scholarship-made possible by funds donated to a scholarship fund by Feeney-and had worked as assistant to the Hotel School dean, Bob Beck. Feeney had met him with Beck a couple of times, and they stayed in touch.
Berry was fascinated by Feeney. "I thought at first he was quite odd. It was almost as if he was embarrassed to be recognized for who he was. I met him subsequently and engaged him in conversation. He looked at me and I remember those steely blue eyes." They began meeting for lunches and dinners in London, where Berry worked as an accountant. "Chuck would bring up ideas, without following any agenda, to see how things unfolded, to see if we would do great things together." Eventually Feeney suggested to Berry that he go to Ireland and look around for investment opportunities.
Berry quit his job, loaded up his Golf GTI, and in May 1987 took the ferry to Ireland with only the vaguest idea of what he was supposed to do. Feeney gave him a large advance payment. "I worked sixteen hours a day for seven days a week for years for that man for that check," said Berry, who came to regard Feeney as a father figure. Feeney came to Ireland a number of times, and they drove around looking at potential investments. "In Dublin we'd eat out every night in Gallery 22. We would have a couple of bottles of Macon Lugny. It was always a ritual." For a while, recalled Feeney, "we were just trucking along and doing things on an ad hoc basis." He acquired the Kilternan Golf and Country Club in the misty foothills of the Dublin Mountains that had Ireland's only-synthetic-ski slope, and Heritage House, one of the finest Georgian buildings in Dublin, which he got Fred Fox to renovate as a showpiece of period décor.
Then a newspaper article caught his eye, about the formation in Dublin of a body called the Irish American Partnership, inspired by Paddy Harte, a member of the Dáil. Harte believed that there was tremendous goodwill toward Ireland among successful Irish Americans but that it wasn't being fully exploited to stimulate business development. Its director general, John Healy, was a shrewd and disarming diplomat, and a former executive of the Irish Trade Board. Feeney arranged to meet him in Dublin. Healy rang a high-level official at the Trade Board to find out in advance more about Feeney. They said they had never heard of him.
Feeney and Padraig Berry called at Healy's Dublin office on September 4, 1987. Healy wasn't sure what to make of Feeney as he briefed him on what the partnership did. "This fellow sat there, you know, with the hooded eyes, not saying very much, looking at us intently," he recalled. Finally he turned to Feeney and said, "What we need to do now is set up a counterpart organization in the US. That's where the action is. Could you advise me where I could find money to do that?" Feeney didn't answer. But as they walked to lunch at the Kildare Street & University Club, Feeney told him that he knew a place in America that might entertain a proposal for a grant of $250,000. He suggested that Healy send the proposal to the Atlantic Foundation Service Company in Ithaca, care of Mr Ray Handlan. After the lunch, Healy called a friend in New York who worked as a fund-raising professional and asked, "What's a foundation service company?" The friend replied, "I haven't a clue." Healy put together his proposal and sent it off to Ithaca. A check for $250,000 duly arrived.
The Kildare Street & University Club was a favourite dining place for Irish academics, and as they made their way to a table that day, Healy introduced Feeney to Ed Walsh, head of the 15-year-old Limerick Institute of Higher Education, who was in Dublin to lobby for full university status.
"Any time you are in the west, you might think of visiting Limerick," said Walsh politely. Feeney replied, "I'll come down and talk to you." Three weeks later, Feeney turned up in Limerick. Walsh was wary of Irish Americans, who were often only concerned about why "the bloody British aren't out of Ireland" and arranged to give him the usual routine: tea in his office for fifteen minutes, then a tour of the campus, situated on rolling meadows by the River Shannon. But the visitor showed an extraordinary interest in his vision for the college and hinted at access to funds.Walsh said later that he knew enough not to ask for a donation, on the basis that "if you ask for money, you will get advice; if you ask for advice, you may eventually get support." Berry recalled that Feeney allowed himself to be "baited and reeled in." Feeney got a blank stare when he asked Walsh how much funding Limerick received from its alumni. In Ireland, universities relied almost exclusively on state subvention. There was no culture of philanthropy, and no Irish educational institutions even had a foundation or a director of development.
"I could see very quickly they could absorb an awful lot of money," recalled Feeney. "The university was on a magnificent site, but buildings were in rough condition. I recognized here was a school on the uptake and a charismatic leader. You need both things to support an organization." Feeney was also attracted by the notion of helping the underdog: If Ireland was the underdog in Europe, Limerick was the underdog in the Irish academic world.
Feeney asked his host: "What's the best university in the United States?" Walsh reeled off a few names: "Stanford? Yale? Harvard?" "No, it's Cornell," said Feeney. "Would you like to come out there? "Walsh hesitated. His visitor wore off-the-peg clothes and a cheap watch and he had no idea who he really was or what he did. But an association with an Ivy League university in the United States would do no harm to his quest for full university status so he agreed.
Walsh travelled to New York in December and joined Chuck and Danielle in their Fifth Avenue apartment overlooking Central Park. Feeney disappeared and came back with some fresh bagels and cream cheese for Sunday brunch, after which they took the short flight to Ithaca, home of Cornell University in upstate New York.
"To my astonishment," recalled Walsh, "Cornell had laid on a most exceptional visit for me.Whoever heard of Limerick, never mind of the National Institute of Higher Education in Limerick! But when we got out of the plane, the top brass was there to meet us. And clearly they were there because of Chuck." It dawned on Walsh that Feeney was "no ordinary Joe Soap." There were sly references to his generosity. Feeney introduced him to Ray Handlan, who told him that Cornell had raised more than $500 million in donations from alumni that year. This was a whole new world. The day ended with a private dinner for Walsh, hosted by Cornell president Frank Rhodes. "It was a puzzling meeting altogether," recalled Rhodes, who also wondered what Feeney was up to. After the dinner, the Irish visitor invited Rhodes to visit Limerick, little expecting that any Ivy League university president would find time to come to his struggling institute.
Within weeks of Ed Walsh's return to Ireland, however, a steady stream of visitors began arriving from the United States: James Whelan, president of Ithaca College and his wife, Gillian; the Cornell dean of business, David Long; Chuck and Danielle with a group that included the dean of the Hotel School; Jack Clark and Ray Handlan; and then Chuck again with Frank Rhodes, who spent two days asking probing questions about how Limerick might develop.
One day Feeney called to say that a friend of his - a leading faculty member at New York University who specialized in the law relating to philanthropy - was in Europe and would like to visit the university. Maybe Walsh would show him around. His name was Harvey Dale.
Any friend of Feeney's was by now given the red carpet. Walsh and his wife, Stephanie, brought Dale and his then-wife Nan sailing on Lough Derg. They took them to dinner at a traditional restaurant near Bunratty. The Dales stayed for a few days, asking questions and looking around.
Without saying what his relationship with Feeney was, the New York lawyer took Ed Walsh aside to tell him that Feeney's potential to assist the university arose more from his network of contacts than from any personal wealth he might possess and that all funding would be anonymous. He also stressed that Feeney was not to be bothered by the press, that he should not be asked to pose for photographs or give interviews, and that failure to respect these conditions could jeopardize any help Feeney might bring to Limerick.
Walsh listened and nodded. He conveyed the conditions to his board. Some members expressed unease about taking money from anonymous sources. But Walsh was able to assure the directors that the conduit for the cash flow was a person highly respected in Ivy League circles in the United States.
Feeney became totally preoccupied with Limerick, recalled Padraig Berry.
"The University of Limerick was coming out of my ears for six months afterward; it was all he would talk about." Often Feeney would arrive at the university and wander about unrecognized. "What was so astonishing was his wish to be ordinary," recalled Walsh.
One of the things that attracted Feeney to Limerick was the cocky attitude of the leadership and its intolerance for bureaucratic restrictions. He learned how Ed Walsh's decision in the late 1980s to raise funds for new student accommodations had been met with outrage and opposition from the Irish Higher Education Authority in Dublin. It was conventional wisdom that any rental fees from student accommodations would be insufficient to service a building loan. John O'Connor, the university's impish finance officer, circumvented the Department of Education by creating a private company that, being legally independent, could not be issued with any directive to stop construction. The first phase of the village was being completed when Feeney first showed up on campus, and eventually expanded to house 1,000 of the 6,000 students.
Limerick provided Feeney with an opportunity he was looking for, to raise the level of spending of his Atlantic Foundation to good effect. His first significant donation was for a concert hall that became a centre of musical activity for the university and the city of Limerick. Atlantic put up IR£6 million, the equivalent of $10 million, and Ed Walsh successfully lobbied the Minister for Education Mary O'Rourke to match it. "In hindsight this initiative was one of enormous importance," said Walsh, whose institute was awarded university status in 1989. "Our success convinced the state bureaucracy that the concept of matching funds could indeed stimulate major private investment in the universities." Feeney and Frank Rhodes encouraged Walsh to establish a foundation to raise money and also to provide advice on the development of the university.
In American universities, distinguished business and community leaders were avidly recruited to advise the president. Irish universities not only had no foundations, their governing bodies were made up largely of political appointees, who could be egocentric, pompous, and driven by political ambition.
Walsh brought the idea to his executive committee. There was an outcry.
If they were successful in raising significant money, wouldn't the state use this as a pretext to reallocate its limited resources to other universities? But Walsh persisted. Much to the astonishment, and annoyance, of Harvey Dale, he then persuaded Chuck Feeney to become the first chairman of the Limerick University Foundation.
The interaction with Cornell and with Feeney stimulated Walsh to think big. He went to the United States to recruit prominent figures for his foundation board. He persuaded Jack Welch, then chairman of General Electric in Connecticut - who had never before heard of Limerick Institute of Higher Education - to send senior executive Frank Doyle to join the directors.
Walsh also targeted Wall Street financier Lewis L Glucksman. Born to a second- generation Hungarian Jewish family in New York, Glucksman had won control of Manhattan-based Lehman in an epic 1983 boardroom battle documented in the book Greed and Glory on Wall Street by Ken Auletta.
Having visited Ireland as a young naval officer, he fell for the country and its literature and had made County Cork his second home. He was married to Loretta Brennan Glucksman, a famous Irish American beauty and philanthropist in New York. Glucksman joined the foundation board and became a major donor, eventually taking over from Feeney as chairman of the Limerick University Foundation. He and Feeney, who shared a liking for early nights, competed at foundation board dinners to see who could slip off first with good grace.
The winner got a necktie.
To deflect inquiries about his anonymous source of funding, Ed Walsh let everyone think he was going off to America once a month and collecting a suitcase full of dollars from rich American businessmen. Astonishingly, this was widely believed. When Feeney was on campus, he was shielded, sometimes physically, from inquisitive eyes. People from Atlantic stood between Feeney and anyone with a camera. On one occasion guests thought they were being photographed, but the official photographer had been instructed not to put film in his camera. Faculty members who got to know who Feeney was declined to identify him at social gatherings. Legal counsel Paul Hannon recalled that when the Limerick Leader published a photograph showing Feeney, Harvey Dale ordered that all available copies of the newspaper be bought up and destroyed.
Feeney poked fun at his own insistence on confidentiality. Once, he turned up at Shannon airport to greet directors of his foundation flying in from the United States by holding up a notice saying: "Welcome to Anonymous Donors."
From the book The Billionaire Who Wasn't: How Chuck Feeney Secretly Made and Gave Away a Fortune by Conor O'Clery. Copyright 2007. Published and reprinted by arrangement with PublicAffairs, a member of the Perseus Books Group (www.perseubooks.com). All rights reserved. The book will be published in hardback on September 3rd.