and in Ireland. Yet very few people would recognize him or know what he has done.

Astonishing. I can't say I've ever encountered such an extraordinary

individual.

Complex.

He certainly always wanted to play fair

but he wanted to play tough.

Odd. A conversation with Chuck Feeney

is unlike any other conversation you’ll have with anyone on Earth.

Paradoxical. When the history comes to be written, it will be shown that Chuck Feeney did have a significant

impact on Ireland.

Inspiring.

He inspired us to think big.

Spiritual.

Chuck Feeney, and you probably heard this from a

whole lot of other people, is a totally one-off.

Compassionate. He’ll know more about you in twenty minutes

than you’d ever know about him. Oh I think

I think the man is a saint.

This is the remarkable story of a man who had it all, but realized

it wasn’t enough.

Chuck Feeney has led an extraordinary life.

He became one of the wealthiest men on the planet

but throughout his life has chosen to remain outside the glare of the media

spotlight.

For over twenty five years his contribution to Ireland both

economically and politically has been monumental, yet

until recently

it went undocumented.

Now in his late seventies he's telling his story

in the hope that others will be inspired as he was.

It begins in the depression era of nineteen thirties America.

Charles Francis Feeney was born in nineteen thirty one

into a small Irish American community in New Jersey. This was the time of the

great depression and both his parents worked hard

to give their kids a good start in life.

I went to a school in an

Irish American neighborhood, and it was a

Catholic School

and we felt

we were

part of that community.

Chuck’s mother Madeline had a strong sense of doing right by the less fortunate.

She worked nights as a volunteer red cross nurse

and for her, there was no one quite like her only son.

He could do things with a straight face and he could get away with it because he was

“my Charles”

As far as my mother was concerned he could commit no sins. She was a good woman, clearly

and she would just consider it

as an obligation to help your neighbors.

When you live in a family

like that, that she was very

very concerned about our neighbors

I think that rubs off on you, you are concerned about people.

You had already been involved in a few money-making schemes, I mean you had an eye to making a buck.

Yeah, the typical things that kids do, mow the lawns,

do odd jobs for neighbors, I particularly recall a friend of mine whose name was Moose Foley

and I

partnered with him because he was the biggest guy in the class. When we’d go

out to shovel snow, I’d be the front man, I’d go to sign up the places we

had to shovel and I’d whistle for Moose, and he’d come over and

start shoveling and

I’d start selling again.

Moose Foley did most of the shoveling, I know that

because my father used to say to him you’re a real conniver, you’re always thinking.

After leaving school, he joined the Air Force and was stationed in Japan as a radio operator during the

Korean War.

One of the benefits of his military service as he well knew, was the

right to a free education afterwards.

“Veteran’s Administration Officers have been set up in every state, and it’s here the ex-soldier goes

if he wants to continue his education under the GI bill of rights.”

“You mean he can get any kind of education he wants?”

“Now you're getting the idea.”

Chuck Feeney, the kid from a blue-collar New Jersey town aimed high.

He applied, and was accepted into the respected ivy-league University of

Cornell.

The first in his family ever to go to college.

The grant from the GI bill didn't leave Chuck much extra

and it wasn't long before he started looking around

for money-making opportunities.

I saw this guy

coming around selling sandwiches

and I saw how the students

flocked down to buy a sandwich,

and so I said, I can do that, that's not difficult and so I

became a

self-made sandwich man.

It was at Cornell that he met a group of men who would later play vital roles

in his business life.

The most influential of all

was a young New Yorker studying law.

I thought he was selling sandwiches with too much bread

and too little peanut butter.

He was clearly an entrepreneur.

His Cornell experience was I think for him transformative

and he not only enjoyed the experience and the people, but

tremendously enjoyed the

friendships

and he always had this sense of gratitude

and therefore as part of his overall view that it's good to give back.

Following his graduation in hotel management

he traveled to France to continue his education,

a decision which would change his life forever.

Well, that’s

playing the hands that you’re dealt and

I wasn’t quite sure which cards

I would be dealt but

I was always thinking about ways

of making

a buck by working

myself as opposed to

working for somebody.

In nineteen fifty six

there were fifty ships of the US sixth fleet in the Mediterranean alone

each of the thirty thousand servicemen was entitled to buy liquor tax free

and Chuck was quick to spot a good business opportunity.

I was in a bar and I ran into an Englishman

who was just starting up a business of

selling liquor to the naval ships. He sent me down to Athens

I got down there and

they told me that the visit of the ships had been canceled.

Using my innate intelligence

I spotted a couple of hookers and

asked them if they knew when the ships were coming and they knew exactly

the day.

I stayed on for two weeks

and then I started my career selling

liquor to the ships.

Chuck the ex-GI and his partner had found the perfect business.

No set up capital and

cash up front.

We were buying something for five plus the transport cost

and selling it for almost fifteen

I looked at the market and said

if it's good for the military it must be good for the tourists

so we started doing the same thing selling them gallon packages of liquor

I said, if you can sell liquor,

why can't you sell perfume and so we sort of

expanded our range of products. As the sales to the tourists continued

Chuck realized that there was a new market opening up with the military.

And then we got so many requests for automobiles he said well we ought to get

into the automobile business and Germany was a natural because at that time there were

about two hundred and fifty thousand

military in Germany with dependents

and so that was when the business was started there in Frankfurt in the summer of

nineteen sixty four.

You had an immediate sense that there was almost ingenious with this fellow, just his focus

on life, his focus on the business

definitely what do they say, type A personality for sure.

Walked quickly, talked quickly, worked incessantly

things were looking up as the sale of cars, alcohol and perfumes continued but

Chuck and his team were in for a shock. Back in New York

they brought in an old college friend to advise them on a tax issue.

We did reorganize the businesses, and we reorganized them so that the

tax risk

was eliminated.

The bad news is that they weren’t making money

but they didn't know it.

Well when I arrived in New York it was clearly

a mess.

It couldn’t be described any other way.

There was no accounting systems

It took

not very long

to conclude that

the liabilities exceeded the assets by approximately

one million six hundred thousand dollars.

We got involved in businesses too quickly,

before we knew it we

were subject to

cutthroat competition. If you

fail honestly you

don’t go to jail, if you fail dishonestly you do go to jail.

Cash flow was tremendous

and people paid very early for the costs so everybody looked at this

money in the bank as profit, as it were.

There were no expense controls of any sort, people spent money as they saw fit

and

it resulted

in an enormous deficit

we were very lucky if we just got it out of debt and closed it down

and moved on to something else.

The business was in serious trouble

and the new team of Chuck Feeney

Alan Parker

Bob Miller

and Tony Pillaro

had no choice but to pay their debts and move on

but an opportunity was just around the corner

which was soon to make them one of the most successful business partnerships in

the world.

The concept of the airport duty free shops was not new. In fact,

the very first duty free shop was opened in Shannon in nineteen forty

six

but in the early sixties international travel was still confined to the

privileged few and large profits from duty free sales were unimagined.

Concessions to run the shops were granted by each government

to the highest bidder.

A friend of ours wrote to us to tell about a

shop that was going to open up at the Honolulu International Airport and

there would be the

concession to sell

any kind of duty free merchandise you wanted.

We bid about a hundred and twenty five thousand

guaranteed over five years

and in no time at all we were doing a giant amount of business.

Chuck was always the most optimistic because he was a visionary

he could see what was going to happen

I was just looking at the figures and adding them up, I could see them growing

but Chuck clearly was the visionary.

With the Olympic games of nineteen sixty four

the Japanese government was keen to present a more liberal image the world.

Japanese citizens were allowed to travel abroad in greater numbers

and the most popular destination was Honolulu in Hawaii.

Chuck’s instincts are sensational

and his competitiveness and tenacity are amazing.

He's also completely

focused

so whenever there was an opportunity to make a change, big or small, to improve the

business

Chuck would often see it. As we explored

the Japanese market we realized that they were keen to buy bargains and we

would

sell a bottle of Johnny Walker Black Label at that stage for about seven dollars a

bottle, it cost them in Japan

thirty five dollars a bottle, so

it was a bargain.

So you had this frenzy, the same was true of perfume, the same was true of cigarettes, they

were buying for ten percent of what they could buy them for in Japan

and in many cases you couldn’t even find the product in Japan.

It was very obvious then that this was a business that had great potential

and I think the one thing that should be

indicated about Chuck

is that he had the foresight and he had the vision. The best descriptive word for that is

lucky

because you know

if you want to pick an emerging market

pick one that people

want, need, and get value from

and all of things that we did qualified.

One of the rules that the business adopted early on and