Co-founder of Atlantic Philanthropies, The Atlantic Philanthropies
Secret Billionaire The Chuck Feeney Story true documentary Part 1
Charles Francis Feeney (born April 23 1931 in Elizabeth, New Jersey)[1] is an Irish-American businessman and philanthropist and the founder of The Atlantic Philanthropies, one of the largest private foundations in the world. He made his fortune as a co-founder, with Robert Warren Miller, of the Duty Free Shoppers Group
About Chuck Feeney
Chuck Feeney, co-founder of The Atlantic Philanthropies, has continued to be recognized for his lifetime of philanthropy and his "giving while living" philosophy. In December 2021, Cornell University presented him with the first Charles F. Feeney '56 Lifetime Achievement Award for Entrepreneurship and Humanity. During the event, speakers noted that Feeney grew up in modest circumstances, attended Cornell on the GI Bill, and later founded the duty-free business DFS Group. They described his giving as having been largely anonymous for many years, a choice Feeney's associate attributed to his personal modesty and desire to keep his family life private. Feeney has stated that he sees "little reason to delay giving when so much good can be achieved through supporting worthwhile causes today." Feeney has frequently spoken about his motivation for philanthropy, emphasizing empathy for those in need. He has said, "I think life is a learning process and you read books, you read stories, you empathize with people," and noted that he "had always empathized with people who have it tough in life." In various remarks, Feeney has expressed that giving while alive allows one to see the impact and "modify your mistakes," adding that it provides "satisfaction that you're achieving something that is helpful to people." He has also stated that there is "an obligation, certainly for the haves to reach out and to look and see what they can do." The Atlantic Philanthropies was scheduled to complete its work in 2016, having given away billions of dollars globally.
Transcript (42 segments)
✨ AI-enhanced transcript with speaker attribution
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Narrator0:00
On the planet but throughout his life has chosen to remain outside the glare of the media spotlight. For over 25 years, his contribution to Ireland, both economically and politically, has been monumental, yet until recently it went undocumented. Now, in his late 70s, he's telling his story in the hope that others will be inspired as he was. It begins in the Depression era of 1930s America.
Charles Francis Feeney was born in 1931 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.
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Chuck Feeney0:51
I went to a school in an Irish American neighborhood, and it was a Catholic school. And, you know, we felt we were part of that community.
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Narrator1:07
Chuck's mother, Meline, 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. But 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.
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Chuck Feeney1:26
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, she was very, very concerned about her neighbors. I think that rubs off on you. You are concerned about people.
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Interviewer1:51
You had already been involved in a few money-making schemes. I mean, you had an eye to making a buck.
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Chuck Feeney1:55
Yeah, the typical things that the 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 over and sign up the places we had to shovel, and then I'd whistle up 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 were a real conniver, you know, you're always thinking.'
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Narrator2:31
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. Veterans Administration offices 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.
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Chuck Feeney3:21
I saw this guy coming around selling sandwiches, and I saw the students flock 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.
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Narrator3:39
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.
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Alan Parker3:50
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.
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Narrator4:18
Following his graduation in hotel management, he traveled to France to continue his education, a decision which would change his life forever.
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Chuck Feeney4:27
Life is the hands that you're dealt. And I wasn't quite sure what 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.
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Narrator4:48
In 1956, there were 50 ships of the US 6th Fleet in the Mediterranean alone. Each of the 30,000 servicemen was entitled to buy liquor tax-free. And Chuck was quick to spot a good business opportunity.
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Chuck Feeney5:03
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. And he sent me down to Athens. I got down there and they told me that the visit of the ships had been cancelled. 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 the two weeks, and then I started my career selling liquor to the ships.
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Narrator5:34
Chuck, the ex-GI, and his partner had found the perfect business: no setup capital and cash up front.
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Chuck Feeney5:41
We're buying something for five plus the transport cost, and selling it for almost 15.
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Narrator5:50
I looked at the market and said, 'Well, 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, 'Well, 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 they would get 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 250,000 military in Germany with dependents. And so that was why the business was started there in Frankfurt in the summer of 1964.
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Bob Miller6:32
You had an immediate sense that there was almost some genius with this fellow. Just his focus on life, focus on the business. Definitely, what do they say, Type A personality for sure. Walked quickly, talked quickly, worked incessantly.
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Narrator6:48
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.
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Tony Polarolo7:00
We did reorganize the businesses, and we reorganized them so that the tax risk was eliminated. The bad news is they weren't making money, but they didn't know it.
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Alan Parker7:15
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, and it took not very long to conclude that the liabilities exceeded the assets by approximately $1,600,000.
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Chuck Feeney7:37
We got involved in businesses too quickly. Before we knew it, we were subject to cutthroat competition. I mean, if you fail honestly, you don't go to jail. If you fail dishonestly, you do go to jail.
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Alan Parker7:53
Cash flow was tremendous in that people paid very early for the cars. 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 the enormous deficit. We would be very lucky if we just got it out of debt and closed it down and moved on to something else.
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Narrator8:14
The business was in serious trouble, and the new team of Chuck Feeney, Alan Parker, Bob Miller, and Tony Polarolo 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 airport duty-free shops was not new. In fact, the very first duty-free shop was opened in Shannon in 1946. But in the early 60s, 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.
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Chuck Feeney9:01
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 want. We bid about $125,000 guaranteed over 5 years.
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Bob Miller9:20
In no time at all, we were doing a giant amount of business. Oh yeah, Chuck was always the most optimistic, and 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.
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Narrator9:42
With the Olympic Games of 1964, the Japanese government was keen to present a more liberal image to the world. Japanese citizens were allowed to travel abroad in greater numbers, and the most popular destination was Honolulu in Hawaii.
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Alan Parker9:55
Chuck's instincts are sensational, and his competitiveness and tenacity are amazing. He's also completely focused. So whatever there was an opportunity to make a change, big or small, to improve the business, Chuck would often see it.
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Chuck Feeney10:12
As we explored the Japanese market, we realized that they were keen to buy bargains. We would sell a bottle of Johnny Walker Black Label at that stage for about $7 a bottle. It cost them in Japan $35 a bottle, so it was a bargain. And so you had this frenzy. The same was true of perfume, the same was true of cigarettes. They were buying for 10% of what they could buy it in Japan, and in many cases you couldn't even find the product in Japan.
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Bob Miller10:44
It was very obvious then that this is a business that had great potential. And I think that one thing that should be indicated about Chuck is that he had the foresight. I mean, 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, get value from. And all of the things that we did qualified.
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Alan Parker11:12
One of the rules that the business adopted early on, and for which I was appointed the policeman, was quiet, actually anonymity. And at least in Chuck's case, was a desire to stay out of the limelight. The more you advertised your success and bragged about it, the more likely it is that you were going to attract both jealousy and competition.
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Narrator11:37
With the incoming 747s, it just changed the business dramatically overnight. The lid literally blew off.
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Chuck Feeney11:47
Well, the 747 has flown millions of people this past year. Some of the first years that I was there, I think we were doing like $10 million a year at the airport and the downtown store. I mean, during its heyday, it would do a million dollars a day. It was mind-boggling. You know, we were just trying to make a buck, and that seemed like a good way to make a buck.
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Bob Miller12:11
It was an exciting time. I mean, every day was like getting up for the kickoff because it would be always something very dramatic, very exciting about it. We drank a lot of champagne, we drank a lot of everything. But you know, when you work hard, you worked hard, and when we played hard, we played hard as well.
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Interviewer12:30
What was the buzz for you at that stage? Was it the business or the making the money, or both?
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Chuck Feeney12:34
I guess it was the success of the business. You know, we started with nothing and now look what we've got. Well, the money began to grow pretty quickly, and I would say by the early '70s, the profits were rolling up very quickly.
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Alan Parker12:48
By that time, it was more than a single duty-free shop. They had bid elsewhere, and they were the largest duty-free retailer in the world. I think by the late '70s, they had five or six thousand employees. The volume by that time was $3 billion a year or so. And because of the structure that had been put in place, virtually all of those profits were tax-free.
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Chuck Feeney13:16
I grew up...