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Good Bad Billionaire
Encore - Chuck Feeney: All duty
00:38:27
Revisiting the story of Chuck Feeney, a billionaire who gave it all away
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- [00:00]
Simon Jack
This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the uk.
- [00:06]
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- [01:06]
Simon Jack
Hi, I'm Simon Jack.
- [01:08]
Zing Seng
And I'm Sing Sing.
- [01:09]
Simon Jack
It's not long now until we'll be back with brand new episodes of Good Bad Billionaire. Before that, as promised, we're bringing back one of our very favorite episodes of the podcast.
- [01:18]
Zing Seng
This is one of the stories we often refer back to. It's one of the most unusual and surprising billionaire stories we've ever covered.
- [01:24]
Simon Jack
Yeah, I love this. An epic tale in many ways, and it's all about a man named Chuck Feeney. Sadly, just a month after the podcast came out in September 2023, Chuck died. But his story is one that's really worth listening to again. There are lots of twists and turns, so do stay to the end.
- [01:40]
Zing Seng
This is the story of Chuck Feeney, a man who was quite literally all duty. Welcome to Good Bad Billionaire, the podcast from BBC Sounds, where we unravel the of how a billionaire got so rich.
- [02:00]
Simon Jack
And then we judge them. Are they good? Are they bad? Or just another billionaire?
- [02:05]
Zing Seng
I'm Zing Seng, and I am a journalist, author and podcaster.
- [02:09]
Simon Jack
And I'm Simon Jack. I'm the BBC's business editor. And neither of us are billionaires, just.
- [02:15]
Zing Seng
To make it absolutely clear. But we are interested in billionaires.
- [02:18]
Simon Jack
Why?
- [02:18]
Zing Seng
Why do you find them fascinating? Simon?
- [02:20]
Simon Jack
Because money gets you power, and that power is largely unaccountable. And that's kind of an interesting position to be in.
- [02:29]
Zing Seng
Exactly. But they could use their power for good, which is exactly what we're gonna talk about in today's episode.
- [02:36]
Simon Jack
Okay, this week's billionaire is a guy called Charles Chuck Feeney, an Irish American born in the 1930s. Now, a lot of the billionaires we cover in this series are pretty well Known household names, but this one was completely unknown to me. And one of the most fascinating stories of all the ones we've looked at.
- [02:54]
Zing Seng
Yeah. I have to say I had never heard of Chuck Feeney either. But the more I read about him and the more I researched him, the more I kind of think he's one of the more fascinating characters on our list.
- [03:04]
Simon Jack
Right, Definitely. I mean, you won't know his name. I didn't know his name, but you'll be very aware of the empire that he created. Every time you come out of an airport and you see this glittering palace to consumerism and you get bombarded by pictures of film stars and their perfume of choice and whiskey offers and cigarettes, Toblerones. What is it with Toblerones and duty free anyway? That's what we're talking about, Duty free. He kind of is the godfather of duty free shopping.
- [03:38]
Zing Seng
So to try and get to grips of who exactly Chuck Feeney is, we're going to throw some numbers at you. So he made $8 billion, but he also donated $8 billion.
- [03:50]
Simon Jack
Yeah. So he was described as the billionaire who wasn't. As fast as he made money, he gave it away.
- [03:56]
Zing Seng
In fact, he gave away $1.5 billion in donations to Ireland alone. To a single country. Don't forget, he's Irish American. So that's a link.
- [04:05]
Simon Jack
Yeah. And basically helped build a thousand buildings across five continents.
- [04:09]
Zing Seng
And in 2023, when his remaining personal net worth is less than $2 million, he's aiming for it to be zero by the time he dies.
- [04:18]
Simon Jack
I've got a feeling when we come to score him on philanthropy, it's going to be pretty high.
- [04:23]
Zing Seng
Even though he was a billionaire, he wears a $15 Casio watch and lives in a two bed rental in San Francisco. A rental.
- [04:32]
Simon Jack
Doesn't even own a house. And he said he'd quite as happily eat a cheese and tomato sandwich as dining in a fancy restaurant.
- [04:39]
Zing Seng
So among the pantheon of billionaires, he's kind of an oddball to say the least.
- [04:44]
Simon Jack
Definitely an outlier and fascinating case.
- [04:50]
Zing Seng
So let's tell the story of how he went from a zero to a million. The Chuck Feeney story from childhood. He's born during the Great Depression in 1931 into a very working class Irish American neighborhood where everyone seems like they helped each other out.
- [05:05]
Simon Jack
Yeah, his parents had this great work ethic, selflessness. His mum would give people a ride when they needed it and pretended that she was going that way anyway. So an early influence that would be reflected in his later life.
- [05:17]
Zing Seng
And he Kind of shows these glimmerings of youthful entrepreneurialism quite early on. So he takes up selling Christmas cards and caddying at the golf club. So like a lot of the other billionaires, you know, he's got an early interest in making money.
- [05:30]
Simon Jack
Yeah, we've seen that. He also did snow shoveling in the winter. So he would go, and basically, I'm going to shovel your snow and then go and get the biggest guy in the class to help him shovel the snow. He managed to attract other people to do the work for him. So that's always quite an entrepreneurial trait.
- [05:44]
Zing Seng
Classic hustler. So Chuck Feeney's childhood actually spans this really interesting point in time. So he's born into the Great Depression. Then afterwards there's the New Deal, you know, there's World War II. He basically has to live through all these tumultuous times. What do you think that does to a person?
- [06:00]
Simon Jack
I think it means that you are not particularly rooted anywhere because there's such flux, the flow of history, you can feel it going through his story. There's the Great Depression, as you say, Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal. To try and sort that out, you then go into the Second World War. What happens in Japan, what. What happens in the US he's basically a kind of, I don't know, like a Forrest Gump of post war America.
- [06:28]
Zing Seng
He really is. And he even served in the US Air Force. So it actually played a pretty big part in his life. It brought him travel, it brought him education. At 17, he joins up as a radio operator during the Korean War and he ends up going to Cornell because he goes on a military scholarship.
- [06:46]
Simon Jack
That's right. People who served in the war were eligible to basically continue their education and would get a grant to do it. And he smart enough to go to an Ivy League university, used his GI scholarship to do that. And that propelled him into an entirely different life than the one he was used to from his Irish American background.
- [07:04]
Zing Seng
And it sounds like even there he was still displaying that real kind of hustler streak. So he became known as the sandwich guy on campus because he realized there wasn't a McDonald's or an equivalent kind of place people could get late night food. So he ended up setting up his own business to sell sandwiches to hungry freshmen. So he's, you know, he's still continuing to illustrate a flair for making money.
- [07:26]
Simon Jack
Yeah, he's got that entrepreneurialism. And also he, I think that thing about in that war period, he's also quite an internationalist I mean, he used the scholarship money he had left and probably from his sandwich proceeds he left to do political science at the University of Grenoble in France. So he's a jet setter, this guy, and that's going to be absolutely pivotal as to how he makes his fortune and then gives it away.
- [07:50]
Zing Seng
And he's pretty cosmopolitan as well. I mean, he learns French and later on we'll see. He'll also learn Japanese.
- [07:55]
Simon Jack
Yeah, and Japan actually, for my money, the, the emergence of post war Japan is probably the pivotal fact in this whole story.
- [08:03]
Zing Seng
But before we get there, he has to meet someone called Roger Miller in France who becomes his business partner. And that's where they come up with the idea of selling duty free items to U.S. navy personnel. But before all that, I think we need an explanation of what exactly duty free is. Because I'm so used to seeing it in airports, I've never really stopped to question myself on what that term even means.
- [08:25]
Simon Jack
It's a weird one, because duty free, it operates in this kind of weird zone, this netherworld, which is sort of between countries where taxes of the country that the actual store is in or where you're going, you're not in either place really. And therefore consumption taxes, things like, you know, tobacco tax, VAT that we're very used to, all of those things that would apply in that country don't apply there because you're kind of between countries and not really in one at all.
- [08:53]
Zing Seng
Is that what an airport really is considered? You know, a zone in between countries?
- [08:57]
Simon Jack
You're basically considered to be in transit, so you're kind of in outer space in a way. You're basically not in one country and not in another. Which means the taxes for the country you're going to don't apply. And the taxes, the one you're leaving, don't apply. Which means that stuff is cheaper because those consumption taxes are not added to the cost of the item you're buying.
- [09:15]
Zing Seng
And most importantly for Chuck Feeney's story, that same rule also applies to US Navy personnel, which is why he and Miller start this business selling duty free items to them.
- [09:26]
Simon Jack
That's right. So they were allowed US service people serving abroad were allowed to bring a certain amount of booze, cigarettes, etc. Back to the the US without paying the taxes they would otherwise pay on it. Having served in the army himself, he knew the mind of the gi. The US service person knew the kind of things that they wanted. And also in a post war world, there were lots of US people living Abroad, both in Japan, in Germany and elsewhere. So there was this kind of community of people coming in and out of countries. So there's a lot of travel involved in that. And that's where that kind of little gap in the market, the duty free, when you're between countries, that's where it opened up.
- [10:06]
Zing Seng
And it's kind of crazy because, you know, at this period in Feeney's life, him and Miller are literally just talking their way onto military vessels, chatting up all these soldiers, kind of finding out what they want, what they could get for them, how much they could sell it for. There's a real kind of catch me if you can vibe to this era in his life. You can just kind of imagine himself being played by George Clooney or Leo DiCaprio, you know, this charming, fast talking Irish American young buck who goes around selling stuff.
- [10:33]
Simon Jack
Yeah.
- [10:33]
Zing Seng
Real salesman.
- [10:34]
Simon Jack
Yeah, like, you want this? I can get you this, I can get you that. Da da da. We've got a great deal on this. A very glamorous Arthur Daly, maybe for British listeners.
- [10:43]
Zing Seng
But crucially at this point they start expanding beyond just tobacco and alcohol and they expand into duty free concessions. And this is where we see the real roots of DFS being planted. Right. They buy these concessions in Hong Kong and Honolulu. In Hong Kong, Hawaii. And they turned them from just kind of market stores of counters held together with tape into actual shops and concept stores.
- [11:07]
Simon Jack
Yeah. And they started out with things like liquor, alcohol, but then they realized if we can do that cheaply, why don't we do perfume? And if you look at the duty free stores today, it's absolutely ranks of perfume. So those kind of luxury goods. So yes, by 1964, their company, which at that time was called Tourist international, is in 27 countries, had 200 employees. So a pretty substantial business.
- [11:29]
Zing Seng
Yeah, I mean, we're talking a multinational company at a time when the world is literally just opening up for international travel. Which when you think about it, is pretty wild.
- [11:39]
Simon Jack
Yeah, but it wasn't plain sailing. In fact, the wheels came off that business in quite a big way.
- [11:44]
Zing Seng
Yeah. In. In quite a literal way, actually. They made what I would not describe as a canny detour into trying to sell cars to gis. Unfortunately, a car is not a bottle of whiskey and it's not a bottle of perfume, and it's significantly harder to ship out and sell to people. So that lost them quite a lot of money. But after they most of the assets to try and recoup their losses, they then decide to focus on what really matters to the story, which is duty free, specifically the Honolulu concession.
- [12:12]
Simon Jack
So they focus on Honolulu, they get their act together and that starts to really make money. And it is in this period, towards the end of the 1960s, we can say that Chuck Feeney gets towards his first million. Our first stage of our story, and.
- [12:24]
Zing Seng
It can't be overemphasized how important this tilt towards Honolulu was, right? Because at the time Japan was literally opening up. So before the 60s, Japan was quite a closed off country. It's quite protectionist, so you weren't actually even allowed to leave the country for leisure travel. But it was around the time the 64 Tokyo Olympics that the government started loosening the restrictions. So for the first time, all these Japanese people with lots of savings were going out into the big wide world and were desperate to spend their money. And Hawaii, which was actually relatively close to Japan, was one of the first places they alighted on one of the.
- [12:59]
Simon Jack
First ports of call for the Japanese tourists. And as you say, post war Japan had not wanted Japanese people to take money out of the country. As things opened up, what started as a trickle of Japanese tourism became a flood from the 1960s onwards. And this is one of the questions we're always going to ask in this series, is it question of being just in the right place at the right time and riding the right wave. And this was a big one.
- [13:22]
Zing Seng
I think it's a mix of both, to be honest, because he did luck out with Japan opening up, but at the same time he did do everything in his power to take advantage of it. I mean, he learned to speak Japanese. That is no mean feat considering, I mean, he went to an Ivy League university but he didn't study languages. And you hear tales of sales assistants saying that, you know, they would turn around and Chuck Feeney would suddenly be on the display floor speaking in flawless Japanese to a Japanese tourist, trying to flog them even more stuff, you know. So this guy really was quite a savvy operator and he knew how important the market was going to be.
- [13:53]
Simon Jack
So he hired the. Through the language and through affinity with that country, he managed to get the product offering right and knew exactly what his customers wanted.
- [14:01]
Zing Seng
So by the end of the 60s, Feeney and also Miller, don't forget, because he's in business with Miller, are millionaires.
- [14:07]
Simon Jack
From a pretty modest Irish American background, he's now a globe trotting, pretty jet set millionaire at a time when being a millionaire really meant something.
- [14:19]
Zing Seng
You see, this is what I mean about the whole George Clooney thing. He speaks multiple languages. He's this kind of charismatic, fast talking guy. I mean, where's the movie? Movie about Chuck Feeney?
- [14:27]
Simon Jack
Yeah, I kind of think of a person like Han Solo or something in Star Wars. He's sort of, you know, just on the border slightly, sailing pretty close, the wind on the rules, charming the locals, knowing where the business is being done, giving people the products and the services they want. Quite a maverick sort of character. Quite, you know, sounds pretty exciting actually.
- [14:53]
Zing Seng
The 70s also brings about a new era for him to live through, which is the era of the jet age.
- [14:59]
Simon Jack
And not only the jet, the jumbo jet, which comes into service in the 70s, and at which point you're funneling many more people through international airports. It was the glamorous jet age when international travel became fashionable, desirable, and how you looked when you travel and what you bought was part of the whole deal.
- [15:19]
Zing Seng
Yeah, it brings to mind that madman age of, you know, being able to light a cigarette on a plane and having a pretty air stewardess pour you do a cocktail. Yeah, you know, that's the age that we're operating in.
- [15:28]
Simon Jack
Against that backdrop, duty free shoppers is basically there as a kind of toll booth just taking a little bit of money every time someone goes through these airports. Because people, I think when they are traveling get a different image of themselves and they're saying, I could look at me, I'm an international, particularly back in the 70s, look at me, I'm an international traveler. Maybe an international traveler like me should have some, some nice perfume, or maybe I should have a nice handbag, or maybe I should have a cool pair of sunglasses. It. You catch people at a time where they've got money in their pocket and are feeling adventurous.
- [16:05]
Zing Seng
Oh, it's. That's a very good way of looking at it. And especially if you're going somewhere you've never been to before. Right. Because when the Boeing 747 gets developed, that changes everything. So all of a sudden all these new places open up as potential stopovers and, you know, pit stops, like Anchorage, for instance, which becomes quite an important DFS outpost. Nobody was going to Anchorage before until it became a place where the Boeing 747s could refuel. And Chuck Feeney is right there opening up a concession store.
- [16:32]
Simon Jack
And the Japan thing's really important because during that period from the 70s into the 80s, Japan was buying up half of California. Japanese investors were buying country clubs. The success of the Japanese economy meant they had plenty of money. The yen had strengthened in value on the, the basis of that. So you got more dollars for your yen at that particular time. So they were outbound, confident, well heeled consumers. And Chuck Feeney was right in the middle to take his slice.
- [17:01]
Zing Seng
And I think what's so interesting is that they were also creating new luxury brands as a result of what they were putting in dfs. So I've always asked myself, you know, you walk through DFS and you look at Camus, Cognac. Cognac. I have never drunk it. And Cognac. Yeah, I had never heard of it until I saw it in dfs. Similarly with something like Nina. Richie.
- [17:20]
Simon Jack
Richie.
- [17:20]
Zing Seng
Richie. Yeah. And apparently those brands were made by being in dfs because by putting them front and center, the Japanese tourists learned to associate them with Western luxury.
- [17:29]
Simon Jack
Yeah. When you had a country which basically had been devastated by the Second World War, had two atomic bombs dropped on it, let's not forget the refining of confidence and looking for international experiences all fed into that kind of perfect consumer storm which Chuck Feeney was able to explore.
- [17:46]
Zing Seng
And DFS rode the wave all the way to the end of the decade. So at the end of the 70s, they have five to 6,000 employees and they're taking in $3 billion a year.
- [17:56]
Simon Jack
So on the one hand, he's living high on the hog. He says, we drank a lot of champagne. We drank a lot of everything. We worked hard and we played hard. Lavish parties. But at the same time, he had a slightly different message to his own family. He never lost those roots that he had.
- [18:11]
Zing Seng
No. He always told his children the importance of working hard. His kids had had summer jobs, you know, when they were on holiday from school. You know, it seems like even though he traveled quite a long way financially from his roots as, you know, a young working class Irish American, that kind of sense of humility never quite left him.
- [18:30]
Simon Jack
In fact, you could say he felt pretty uncomfortable almost. There was a sort of disquiet in him about the fact that he just felt a bit funny about the wealth he was creating. And that becomes a very big part of why we're even discussing this today.
- [18:43]
Zing Seng
I mean. Yeah, because. Because just as he's approaching the billionaire club, there's quite a pivotal moment in his life where his lawyer, Harvey Dell, introduces him to philanthropic literature. Now, I had no idea philanthropy even had literature to speak of, but it became a pretty big deal to Feeney.
- [18:59]
Simon Jack
Yeah. There was an essay by Andrew Carnegie, famous philanthropist, huge industrialist, an essay called wealth and a quote from a guy called the Reverend Frederick Gates, no relation to Bill Gates, as far as I know. But he said this to the world's first billionaire, John D. Rockefeller. Who knows? Maybe we'll cover him at some point. It says, Mr. Rockefeller, your fortune is rolling up like an avalanche. You must distribute it faster than it grows. If you do not, it will crush you and your children and your children's children. Wow.
- [19:29]
Zing Seng
Yeah. I mean, pretty punchy words. It kind of comes off more like a threat, to be honest.
- [19:34]
Simon Jack
Yeah, it's basically saying, the God of Mammon money will eventually destroy you. And anyway, he takes it to heart, right?
- [19:41]
Zing Seng
Yeah, he really does. Because. Because at 50, Chuck Feeney makes his first major philanthropic donation. He gives 700,000 to his Alma mater, the place that started him off on this journey, Cornell. So that's in 1981. So he's already starting to give away quite a lot of money.
- [19:57]
Simon Jack
But, you know, he got a taste for it, so he set up this foundation called Atlantic Philanthropies. $5 million of his own money, and within two years, he'd given $15 million through that foundation.
- [20:10]
Zing Seng
But the really interesting thing about Atlantic is the absolute code of silence that he insists upon. It's almost like a mafia, like Omerta. If you receive a donation from Atlantic, you are not allowed to say where it comes from. You are not allowed to breathe a word of his name. There's an amazing story. Don't even. Maybe an apocryphal story where he turns up at an event and the photographer is given an empty camera without any film in, so he thinks he's taking pictures of Chuck Feeney, but. But no pictures are ever developed because Chuck Feeney does not want to be associated with what he's giving away at all.
- [20:42]
Simon Jack
It's really odd that, isn't it? Because most philanthropic benefactors quite like the name above the library, quite like the name on the hospital wing. In America, it's a bit like their honors system. You don't get made a sir or a lord in America, but you do get. If you're rich, you do get. Get things named after you because you become a benefactor. And, you know, that's kind of the expectation in the US Perfectly fine for you to get filthy rich, but you then have to start giving back. But when you give back, usually let everyone know that you're doing it. And I think it's a really interesting mindset. They said if you reveal the source of these funds, you won't get any.
- [21:19]
Zing Seng
I mean, I've tried to puzzle out why he was so insistent on this kind of secrecy because it is quite unusual. I mean, like you say, you walked up to any big museum or hospital or university in America that is going to be someone who donated a huge chunk of money with a name on a building. And I kind of feel like maybe something happened when he served in the military that it was impressed upon him the importance of secrecy and being discreet.
- [21:42]
Simon Jack
One theory I have is that the reason he didn't want to give too much away is that people would realize just how much money Duty Free Shoppers were actually making and that would inspire jealousy and competition. And actually they were very handily off radar because they're basically not really in any countries at all. They're kind of between the countries. And they were quite happy to make that money in secret because they didn't want anyone else to realize what a good thing they had going.
- [22:07]
Zing Seng
I also think part of it maybe is because he'd seen rich people throw their cash around and been targeted for things like their children got kidnapped, they were extorted. Exactly. This is the time of Patty Hearst. He had kids that he absolutely adored and he would not have wanted any of them to go through what she went through. So maybe there was a bit of that, a little bit of self protection as well.
- [22:27]
Simon Jack
Well, maybe it's like his mom pretended that she was going the way when she gave lifts to people, said she was going that way anyway. Maybe it's because if you want recognition, it's kind of doing the right thing for the wrong reason.
- [22:41]
Zing Seng
That is a good theory.
- [22:42]
Simon Jack
And so listen, he's making tons of money. He's secretly giving some of it away. In the mid-80s, his wealth was estimated around then to be close to a billion dollars. But just as he reached the moment that allows him inclusion into this whole program series, there was a pivotal moment.
- [23:01]
Zing Seng
He signs away his fortune to that foundation, Atlantic. And that also includes a 38.5 billion dol stake in duty Free Shoppers. And that is incredible. I mean, let's put that into perspective. He's basically signed away all his wealth.
- [23:16]
Simon Jack
But he did keep some back for his wife and children and a little bit for himself. But as pocket money, a poultry 40.
- [23:22]
Zing Seng
Million to his wife and kids and.
- [23:24]
Simon Jack
Kept 5 million bucks for himself, you.
- [23:26]
Zing Seng
Know, which obviously is a lot of money, but compared to a billion?
- [23:30]
Simon Jack
Yeah, exactly. You know, I saw a documentary about this and I saw some of his family members introduced. It's like you did what? They sort of went, okay, because his lawyer said to him, he said, are you sure you want to do this? Because once you sign what they call an irrevocable trust. It means exactly that. You can't change your mind. If you're signing that money away, it's gone. So he goes off to Bermuda, place where that lots of international trusts are established, mainly because there's no tax there and it has very favorable tax treatment, which is another interesting thing that although he's a massive of philanthropist, as we'll see as we go forward, he doesn't like the idea of paying tax too much either for his customers in duty free or indeed himself because he organizes a lot of his affairs offshore where the tax authorities can't get to him. So it's the late 80s. DFS is now the largest seller of liquor. That's hard liquor, doesn't include beer and wine in the world. He's selling $250 million worth a year. And in 1988 he was named by Forbes magazine as the 23rd richest American alive.
- [25:20]
Zing Seng
And they say he's got a fortune of $1.3 billion, but little do they know he's actually signed most of it away.
- [25:27]
Simon Jack
Yeah, so he was the billionaire, as someone said that wasn't so everyone thought he was a billionaire, but in fact he'd given it away. How do you stay quiet in situations like that? I don't know.
- [25:36]
Zing Seng
I think one of the. The thing he got called was what the James Bond of philanthropy. So utterly secret, so discreet. I mean. Yeah, it's kind of a miracle he got away with it for so long.
- [25:46]
Simon Jack
Yeah. I mean, although we all know about it now though, don't we? Yes, in the end we did. In the end we found out. I mean, I just wonder whether he could have gone to his grave not telling anyone.
- [25:55]
Zing Seng
I actually think he would have preferred that. I feel like, you know, reading about the kind of person he was, he would have gotten a real kick out of it.
- [26:02]
Simon Jack
And it's interesting because the usual way that wealth is redistributed is through the tax system. So the rich people pay a bit more and it gets dished out of people who need it more. But he basically hated that idea, thought the government was not the right mechanism to do it and thought that business people, particularly one with his eye and his instincts, would be much more effective at helping people than any government could be.
- [26:27]
Zing Seng
I could sort of see his point and sort of not. I mean, you're placing an awful lot of importance on a single person at the top of the pyramid to figure out where the right place for the money is. And that person might have no idea about anything to do with politics or government or, you know, where local councils need the money. And that's where government should kind of step in, surely.
- [26:47]
Simon Jack
Yeah. Governments who are accountable to raise that accountability point. A billionaire who decides to dish out money left, right and center. They've obviously made lots of money from a system which they have prospered from, and maybe they should pay back into that system and let the electorate decide how the spoils of wealth are divided rather than the whim of an individual.
- [27:08]
Zing Seng
And Chuck Feeney had quite a lot of whims. Right. I mean, he donated across a huge range of causes.
- [27:14]
Simon Jack
He starts in a way back where we started our story in the Irish community. And in particular, he was a massive benefactor in Ireland.
- [27:22]
Zing Seng
So he started out by focusing on higher education because for Chuck Feeney, his experience at Cornell really gave him the kind of, you know, the chops and the education, the leg up that he really needed at the time. So he focuses on higher education in Ireland. He donates tens of millions to universities across Ireland, always telling them that they are not allowed to say that this is where the money came from.
- [27:46]
Simon Jack
Yeah. And the Irish community in the US was actually quite a powerful political force within Ireland and also, you know, had a. A big role to play during the. The troubles and then the end of the troubles with the Good Friday agreement. And in fact, in 19, he was asked to join the Irish American group to go to Ireland to talk to the IRA about a ceasefire, to put it into context.
- [28:10]
Zing Seng
So he's a philanthropist and, you know, ex billionaire who was involved in university education and helping to support university education in Ireland. And here he is getting involved in proper politics. Now, this is.
- [28:22]
Simon Jack
This is big stuff because he actually agreed to fund Sinn Fein, the political wing of the IRA at that time, to fund them to open a Washington office after an IRA ceasefire in 1994. He paid a million dollars that came out of his own pocket, by the way, not out of the actual philanthropic trust, because he said that that wasn't what the philanthropic Atlantic philanthropies was meant to do. But that was a pretty bold thing to do and will have raised massive eyebrows, certainly in the uk.
- [28:52]
Zing Seng
Oh, yeah. And, you know, he even got involved in Cuba. He started getting involved in supporting medical causes in Cuba at a time when most people in America would have not gone anywhere near it even meant that he ended up meeting Fidel Castro, which is pretty crazy.
- [29:07]
Simon Jack
And also having he met Jerry Adams, the head of Sinn Fein, and then in a way, became an emissary of sorts back to Bill Clinton in the White House. And so actually, you could argue, had quite a fundamental effect on one of the great political shifts in the 1990s, which ultimately culminated in the Good Friday agreement. But it wasn't without controversy. Meeting Jerry Adams, funding Sinn Fein, that was very controversial.
- [29:33]
Zing Seng
So 1996 is a huge year for Chuck Feeney because this is when he decides he wants to sell the DFS stake to lvmh.
- [29:42]
Simon Jack
Lvmh? Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy, controlled by Bernard Arnault, who you may remember, came up in our episode about Rihanna, joint business partner with her. Yeah, he wants to sell up. And at this point, this is where the big reveal comes, because it's such a substantial stake in the company that he owns through this foundation, that they have to disclose who owns this stake. And at that point, if you like, the mask of secrecy has to go because they've got to file the paperwork.
- [30:09]
Zing Seng
And it also means that he loses Miller because Miller does not want to.
- [30:13]
Simon Jack
Sell his old business partner he's been in business with for years. Miller doesn't want to sell, but he forced it through anyway. And that, by the look of it, is the end of their relationship.
- [30:20]
Zing Seng
Yeah. So the New York Times runs a blockbuster interview with Feeney where basically comes out and says, I've been the secret philanthropist for years and years, and I'm not even a billionaire anymore. And. But it's a big shock to the world.
- [30:33]
Simon Jack
And. Yes. And in fact, they figure that if his foundation had been in the U.S. it would have been America's fourth largest philanthropic institution if it were based in the U.S. so the charity is now out in the open.
- [30:47]
Zing Seng
And this also means that Feeney's personal wealth is disclosed as less than $2 million. He's given away $610 million and is set to give away the rest.
- [30:56]
Simon Jack
So. So the billionaire who isn't, his anonymity is gone. So how does he react to that?
- [31:03]
Zing Seng
He actually speeds up the process of giving away even more of his money.
- [31:07]
Simon Jack
And he's still living in rented accommodation with a $15 watch, having given away. By the end of this process, he's made 8 billion and given pretty much all of that away.
- [31:17]
Zing Seng
And one thing I do love about him is that up until his 80s, when he had to stop for health reasons because his children begged him to, he insisted on flying economy classes.
- [31:27]
Simon Jack
Did he? I mean, I would give myself that one concession. Wouldn't you? I really, really would. Especially given the fact he spent his entire life in airports.
- [31:35]
Zing Seng
I mean, you have to give it to him. The man is consistent if nothing else.
- [31:39]
Simon Jack
Yeah. So bring us up to date. It's 2023. Chuck is now how old?
- [31:44]
Zing Seng
He's 92 years old, and he lives in a rented apartment with his second wife, Helga.
- [31:49]
Simon Jack
And he's named by Forbes not in the billionaire category anymore, but in America's top 25 philanthropists with a personal wealth.
- [31:57]
Zing Seng
Of less than 2 million dol. Which makes him the poorest philanthropist on the list by far. Yeah.
- [32:02]
Simon Jack
And other billionaires really take their hat off to him. Warren Buffett, who is also lives very modestly for someone who's worth tens of billions of dollars. He said, Chuck set an example. He's my hero. And Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft's hero. He should be everybody's hero.
- [32:19]
Zing Seng
I mean, I have to take my hat off to Feeney because he does honestly sound like one of the humblest rich people I've ever read about.
- [32:26]
Simon Jack
Yeah, because there are people who give money away, but they tend to do it in quite a grandiose way. Having seen him in interview, he is a very sharp but mild mannered, reserved person. And one of the things that I find really touching about said, why did you do this? Is you're never going to run out of people who need help. Which I thought was pretty cool. Yeah.
- [32:44]
Zing Seng
I mean, even when you read about what it was like to work with him, I think one staffer at Atlantic said that he never used to demand that people run errands for him. So if you're at the head of a company, you could basically snap your fingers and say he, hey, man, go pick up some lunch for me. Get my dry cleaning. Chuck would never do that. And in fact, they used to see him pick rubbish up off the street because his mentality was, if everyone did it, there wouldn't be any trash left on the street.
- [33:08]
Simon Jack
That's amazing. I mean, that's almost to a point where it's kind of a personality disorder. What a remarkable story and a remarkable man. So now comes the point when we have to judge him by our criteria. So just remind us how this works again.
- [33:30]
Zing Seng
So we're going to rank Chuck Feeney from zero to a ten on different billionaire metrics.
- [33:35]
Simon Jack
So let's go through our categories. Wealth in the pantheon of billionaires, where does he sit?
- [33:40]
Zing Seng
I mean, zero, because he's not a billionaire anymore, if he ever was.
- [33:43]
Simon Jack
Because I think actually he started giving away the money before he even hit the billion dollars. So you could argue that he's got no place on this program. Because he never even had a billion dollars to his name.
- [33:53]
Zing Seng
Well, but people crucially thought he did.
- [33:55]
Simon Jack
Yeah, crucially they did. So we're going to give him, weirdly, for good. Bad billionaire. Gonna give him a zero.
- [34:03]
Zing Seng
Yeah, I would give him a zero.
- [34:05]
Simon Jack
Sorry, Chuck. Zero.
- [34:06]
Zing Seng
It's what he would have wanted.
- [34:09]
Simon Jack
Rags to riches. Let's assume for the purposes of this category that he is rich, even though he's not really. He has traveled pretty far from his Irish American.
- [34:19]
Zing Seng
Yeah.
- [34:20]
Simon Jack
Born in the Great Depression roots.
- [34:22]
Zing Seng
I mean, it's almost like a Scorsese story, isn't it?
- [34:25]
Simon Jack
I feel like a Scorsese story.
- [34:26]
Zing Seng
I would give him a 10, to be honest. Because that narrative of, you know, being that plucky young K from a hard up neighborhood all the way to being the cosmopolitan jet set entrepreneur, to being the philanthropist who lives in secret, I mean, that's a 10 for me.
- [34:41]
Simon Jack
Against the background of war, New deal, the jumbo jet age, the opening up of Japan. I mean the film kind of like you can see it.
- [34:50]
Zing Seng
Yeah, it writes itself. I would give it a 10.
- [34:53]
Simon Jack
Villainy. This is where we ask, are they a bit of a kind of James Bond villain? Have they done people over to get to the, the top?
- [34:59]
Zing Seng
I mean, I honestly would give this guy a zero too. I don't. I mean, sure, he probably operated quite close to the wind on quite a lot of tax related matters. And definitely when DFS first set up, he took advantage of a lot of the cracks in the system, to put it mildly. I mean, you could argue, you know, he had his faults. For instance, the whole business he built is based on avoiding sales tax. And the philanthropic ventures he kind of embarked on were based on this attitude that, that he kind of knew better than governments.
- [35:30]
Simon Jack
Yeah, he hates taxes, he hates his customers paying them. He hates paying them himself. He hates jurisdictions where they're levied, so he goes to other places. It's a very interesting mindset that he clearly thinks, as a lot of libertarians do, the architecture of government is wasteful and it makes poor decisions. And that you could argue is a, an arrogant position to take.
- [35:52]
Zing Seng
But when it comes comes to reading about how he worked with people, people at DFS seem to genuinely love him, like in a way that you do not get with a lot of bosses. Like people sang his praises. So I'd give him a zero.
- [36:05]
Simon Jack
Yeah, I think that for any sharp practice that was probably inevitably involved in his making, the money was more than atoned for, by the way. He gave it away. Because I can imagine him being Quite a slick operator, you know, in a post war kind of situation. But he's absolved himself with, with his philanthropy.
- [36:21]
Zing Seng
Philanthropy 100.
- [36:23]
Simon Jack
Which brings us on to the next category where surely philanthropy is a category. This is a big fat 10, isn't it?
- [36:28]
Zing Seng
I mean this is a 10 out of 10 for me. An 11 out of 10.
- [36:31]
Simon Jack
We give 11 would be the Spinal Tap of philanthropy. It goes up to 11. This one goes up to 11. Exactly. Yeah.
- [36:39]
Zing Seng
And power.
- [36:41]
Simon Jack
Power. Now this is an interesting one because a secret billionaire who gives away his money without telling anyone, you wouldn't think had have much power, but we saw with his influence in the Northern Ireland peace process, actually he had a lot of clout.
- [36:57]
Zing Seng
Right. And you know, he's an example of how you can use money as a force for good. You know, whether or not it bypasses government taxation or whatever. He actually channeled it towards a lot of really charitable causes. He changed a lot of people's lives.
- [37:09]
Simon Jack
Yeah. He famously said that he thought the island was falling behind and didn't have the educational opportunities for the people of that nation that they deserved. And he totally changed that. He gave money to 10 universities. You look at the Irish economy now, it is a knowledge, skills based. It was the Celtic Tiger, if you remember was the way they used to describe it. That in no small part was down to the probably Chuck Feeney and his investment in the university system there.
- [37:35]
Zing Seng
And he didn't just do things for Ireland, you know, he also went to places like Vietnam, Australia, South Africa and basically plunged loads of money into their education systems as well to try and bring them up to speed. So you know, when you have the kind, kind of power and influence that means you can single handedly with your money, change the course of an entire country's path. I mean that's a 10, surely for power as a powerful guy.
- [37:59]
Simon Jack
Yeah. It's not how we would traditionally think of power perhaps, but I think it's a. Yeah, let's get. I'm going to give him a nine.
- [38:05]
Zing Seng
Okay. What about legacy? How have they changed the course of history?
- [38:10]
Simon Jack
Well, maybe he has set a benchmark for philanthropy that other people will judge themselves by. And it may well be the benchmark that we judge all of the people in this series by. Any self respecting billionaire would find it pretty hard to compare themselves to this guy.
- [38:29]
Zing Seng
That's an enormous legacy.
- [38:30]
Simon Jack
It's enough to make you want to be rich.
- [38:34]
Zing Seng
Yes, that is the only reason I would want to be rich.
- [38:36]
Simon Jack
Yeah. Okay, 10.
- [38:38]
Zing Seng
10 for me.
- [38:40]
Simon Jack
We're giving out a lot of tens here.
- [38:41]
Zing Seng
I feel like he is the exemplary. He's the benchmark. I think he's so unusual.
- [38:46]
Simon Jack
We've gone, like to the last episode of Strictly Come Dancing too quickly here. It's all four tens. You know, it's tens across the. Exactly. So I don't think he's changed the world as much as, say, for example, Bill Gates has changed the way computing and how we work or how Jeff Bezos has changed the way we shop and interact with the Internet. But it's a formidable philanthropic. He's not your average billionaire. So I'm going to give him an 8, but in my heart it's a 10.
- [39:19]
Zing Seng
Okay, I'm going to meet you in the middle and give him a nine.
- [39:22]
Simon Jack
Okay. So good, bad, or just plain rich?
- [39:26]
Zing Seng
An unmitigated good.
- [39:27]
Simon Jack
Unmitigated. Little, tiny.
- [39:29]
Zing Seng
Okay, a tiny bit of mitigation, but still good.
- [39:32]
Simon Jack
I think that anyone who gives away $8 billion has got to get a bit of a tick and a rattle of applause, haven't they? Well done, Chuck. For you, what a great story. Thanks for listening.
- [39:42]
Zing Seng
If you want to know more about Chuck, I'd recommend his biography, the Billionaire who Wasn't. How Chuck Feeney Secretly Made and Gave Away a Fortune by Conor O'Clary.
- [39:49]
Simon Jack
And if you want to hear more episodes of Good Bad Billionaire, make sure you're subscribed in time for our new season starting on March 17th. And keep an eye on the feed before that for some exciting news about some of the billionaires we have coming up this year.