He doesn't want to take it with him
The Billionaire Who Wasn't: How Chuck Feeney Secretly Made and Gave Away a Fortune, By Conor O'Clery, Public Affairs, 337 pp., $26.95
In its October 1988 listing of the 400 richest Americans, Forbes magazine placed Charles F. Feeney 23d - worth, it reported, an estimated $1.3 billion.
Feeney - invariably known as "Chuck" - was shocked that his long-held cover of anonymity had been blown, and as Irish journalist Conor O'Clery reports in his insider biography, "The Billionaire Who Wasn't," immediately sought ways to contain the damage.
Noting that a Forbes editorial commented that the only ways to get off its 400 list were to lose one's money, give it away, or die, Feeney wrote in a memo to his longtime attorney and adviser, Harvey Dale, that "Option (1) is unlikely, Option (3) is undesirable. That leaves Option (2)."
Feeney had already made his billion through his pioneering Duty Free Shoppers in airports and other sites around the world - and with his partners was in the process of making more through the DFS shops and other enterprises.
But what Forbes did not know was that Feeney was already giving away his fortune through his highly secretive Atlantic Foundation.
It did, however, hint at his frugal lifestyle. As Feeney once put it, "If I can get a watch for $15 that keeps perfect time, what am I doing messing around with a Rolex?"
Feeney was born in Newark in 1931, the son of blue-collar Irish-American parents. After service during the Korean War, he attended Cornell University, attracted by its hotel management school. Graduating in 1956, he ended up in Europe, where he found his first opportunity - selling liquor to US sailors stationed on the French Riviera. Following the fleet to a new base at Barcelona, he looked up a fellow hotel school alumnus, Robert Miller, who was working on the reception desk at a hotel there. Their meeting, O'Clery writes, "marked the start of one of the most profitable partnerships in international business history" - what eventually became Duty Free Shoppers.
DFS was initially a catalog store, displaying luxury goods that could be delivered - duty-free - to American tourists upon their return home. It later expanded to sell goods directly.
O'Clery recounts, at times a bit breathlessly, the wild entrepreneurial ride enjoyed by Feeney and his partners. It came to an end in 1996 when a buyout proposal came from a French firm, just as Feeney was seeking to devote himself entirely to philanthropy.
A year later, responding to inevitable interest in the breakup of a multi-billion-dollar enterprise, Feeney went public - characteristically in a pre-arranged call to a
Feeney confirmed that he was personally worth only $2 million, having already given away - always with a pledge of secrecy from the beneficiaries - some $600 million and was set to give away the estimated $3.5 billion from his share of the DFS sale.
Over the past decade, Feeney has funded schools, hospitals, and other causes in Ireland (both the Republic and the North), Vietnam, and the United States, including Cornell, to which he has given some $2.6 billion over the years.
As a philanthropist, Feeney believes in "giving while living" -- that "the dollar you give today can be doing good tomorrow, giving five percent of it doesn't do so much good."
It should be noted that when Feeney began giving away his fortune, his then-wife Danielle and their five children were richly provided for. His children, writes O'Clery, told him "that they believe their father's act of giving is something to acknowledge and celebrate." His youngest daughter, Diane, now runs a family philanthropic foundation.
"The Billionaire Who Wasn't" is, as noted, an "insider biography," and O'Clery acknowledges having virtually unlimited access to Feeney. From the very first pages, Feeney appears in the most positive light. But if there are any skeletons hidden in some closet, readers are likely to hope they remain there.
Michael Kenney is a freelance writer who lives in Cambridge.
