Anthony JF O’Reilly, a charming, high-flying Irish-born former chairman of the HJ Heinz Company who also owned newspapers, luxury brands and luxury real estate in France and the Bahamas only to lose almost everything in his eighth decade, died on March 18 May in Dublin. He was 88.
The Irish Times and other Irish newspapers, citing a family spokesman, reported that he died in hospital. No reason was given.
From the start, Mr. O’Reilly, who was known as Tony, showed an embarrassment toward gifts. Even as a teenager he was a top-class rugby player – the “red-headed pin-up boy of Irish rugby”, as The Guardian put it. His business talent was equally precocious.
At 26, as marketing director for the Irish Dairy Board, he founded the Kerrygold brand to sell Irish butter to English grocery buyers, and it remains one of the country’s best-known global exports.
Mr. O’Reilly was recruited by Heinz in 1969 to run its U.K. operations and then moved to the company’s headquarters in Pittsburgh, where he rose to CEO and became the first chairman from outside the Heinz family. Under his leadership, Heinz’s value increased twelvefold. Business Week called him “one of the world’s most charismatic businessmen.”
“He has a million stories and tells them all well,” Richard M. Cyert, a Heinz director, told Business Week in 1997. “Sitting down to lunch with him is like going to the cinema for entertainment.”
Mr. O’Reilly played tennis at the White House with President George H. W. Bush, who was reportedly considering him for commerce secretary. He helped found the Ireland Fund, whose support for peace projects in Northern Ireland undermined the Irish Republican Army’s fundraising among Irish Americans. Queen Elizabeth II knighted Mr O’Reilly in 2001 for his service in Northern Ireland.
He had made a highly unusual arrangement at Heinz that also enabled him to build his own business empire. On Fridays after work he would fly to Dublin on the Gulfstream plane to attend meetings and sometimes a rugby match. He then flew back to Pittsburgh to be in his office at 8 a.m. Monday
Perhaps more successful than any other entrepreneur, he rode through the Irish economic boom of the 1990s and 2000s known as the Celtic Tiger, becoming the country’s richest man and reportedly its first billionaire.
With the purchase of The Irish Independent, the country’s leading newspaper, in 1973, he founded his newspaper group Independent News & Media. It grew to more than 100 publishers, including The Independent of London and newspapers in Australia, New Zealand and southern Africa, giving Mr O’Reilly access and influence with political leaders.
In 1990 he bought Waterford Wedgwood, the Anglo-Irish crystal and porcelain company, with the aim of expanding it into a global luxury group along the lines of Gucci and LVMH.
Mr. O’Reilly acquired the lifestyle and famous friends that matched his prestigious companies. His Irish base was Castlemartin, a 750-acre estate where President Bill Clinton and Nelson Mandela were guests.
He also owned a Georgian mansion in Dublin, a beach house on Lyford Cay in the Bahamas and a castle in Deauville, France. His art collection included a Monet worth $24.2 million and works by Picasso and Matisse.
Although Mr. O’Reilly built his fortune on Heinz’s ample compensation, the company’s dull brands did not reflect his ambitious tastes. According to The Irish Times, he once said of Heinz’s ubiquitous ketchup: “We make it every day in 100 factories around the world.” Owning newspapers, however, offers “more than you can get out of baked beans,” he said .
However, that didn’t stop him from spending Heinz’s money lavishly to add glamor to the company. He flew hundreds of guests to Ireland for an annual gala ball and thoroughbred race, the Heinz 57 Stakes.
In 1996, Forbes named him the fourth highest-paid CEO in the United States, despite the company’s disappointing results for several years. “Tony O’Reilly’s ego and salary are greater than his achievements,” the magazine wrote.
He resigned as chairman of Heinz the following year, but remained chairman until 2000. In his early 60s he devoted himself entirely to his own businesses, which, in addition to newspapers and luxury goods, included oil exploration and a company that converted castles into hotels.
Like many business empires, Mr. O’Reilly’s was built on debt. When the global financial crisis hit like a Category 5 hurricane in 2008, Mr. O’Reilly’s ventures failed. He lost control of his media properties to a long-time rival, Irish tycoon Denis O’Brien.
In 2009, Waterford Wedgewood, into which Mr O’Reilly had invested large personal sums, failed and went into receivership.
Pursued by creditors, he sold many of his artworks and his beloved Castlemartin, which American telecommunications billionaire John Malone bought in 2015 for 7.4 million euros, or about $10.2 million.
Mr. O’Reilly’s lawyers said he owed eight banks 195 million euros, or about $268.9 million, at the time. In 2015, when he was 79, he filed for bankruptcy in the Bahamas.
Anthony John Francis O’Reilly was born in Dublin on May 7, 1936, the only child of John and Aileen O’Conner. His father was a civil servant.
According to a 2015 biography of Mr. O’Reilly, “The Maximalist,” by Matt Cooper, Tony, as he was known, learned when he was 15 that his parents were not married. His father had left a wife for Tony’s mother with whom he had four children. The couple officially married in the mid-1970s.
Tony O’Reilly’s elite rugby career began in 1955 at the age of 19 when he toured internationally with the Lions, a team made up of the best players in Great Britain and Ireland. He was the Lions’ youngest player and still holds the record for most tries – the equivalent of a football touchdown – scored in tryouts (games against other national or regional teams).
On a rugby tour of Australia, Mr O’Reilly met Susan Cameron, whom he married in 1962. They had six children, including triplets, before divorcing in 1990. His second wife, Chryss Goulandris, a Greek shipping heiress whom he married in 1991, died last year.
Mr. O’Reilly is survived by his sons Anthony Cameron, Gavin and St. John Anthony; his daughters, Susan Wildman, Justine O’Reilly and Caroline Dempsey; and 23 grandchildren.
In 2018, Mr O’Reilly addressed friends and former teammates who had gathered in his honor at the Old Belvedere Rugby Club in Dublin.
“You win and you lose,” he said, “and if you don’t know how to lose, you don’t know how to live.”
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2024-06-22 04:25:28
www.nytimes.com
