American businessman and philanthropist Charles Feeney, co-founder of Duty Free stores, died this Monday at the age of 92. Feeney is known for having donated a large part of the fortune he amassed in recent decades, parting with more than 8 billion dollars, about 7.5 billion euros at the current exchange rate. Almost all of his fortune. For Bill Gates, promoter of programs for billionaires to donate their wealth, it was "the greatest example of donating in life."
He was a businessman who lived a frugal life - he wore a cheap watch, he did not have his own home and instead of work briefcases he used bags -, devoted to donations. "I had an idea that never changed, that you should use your fortune to help people," Feeney acknowledged in his biography. "It's a lot more fun to give while you're alive than to give when you're dead," he said. According to Forbes, no one so rich has donated as much of his fortune while he was alive.
Feeney was born in New Jersey in 1931, the son of a nurse and a father who worked in the insurance industry. The family's Irish roots caused him to donate millions of dollars to the island, both north and south.
The entrepreneurial path opened quickly. Even as a child he sold Christmas cards door to door or removed snow from neighbors' driveways after storms in exchange for small payments. After joining the American Air Force, he studied hotel management, received a scholarship, and sold sandwiches to his colleagues to cover expenses. After graduating he began to travel the world and co-founded a network of stores selling duty-free goods - liquor, tobacco, perfumes - to tourists. In the early years his big customers were American soldiers deployed in Europe who were returning home.
The business became Duty Free Shoppers, one of the world's largest retailers in its sector. It then expanded to other stores, hotels and resorts. He began buying houses all over the world and living a life of luxury. By amassing so much money, he began to wonder if he deserved it, explains the New York Times. That did not excite him and he decided to start donating his fortune. He sold his limousines, started riding the subway and embraced a more mundane life.
Through his Atlantic Philanthropies foundation, he donated some $8 billion - more than €7.5 billion - over decades to causes around the planet, mainly in health, education, infrastructure and human rights.
Founded forty years ago, it completed the donations in 2016 and dissolved in 2020, with almost the entire fortune distributed. The foundation, which reported his death, explains that he "traveled non-stop until recent years" to "seek business opportunities and, ultimately, opportunities to improve the lives of others."
Distributing money to initiatives in some 70 countries, from Ireland to Australia, Vietnam, South Africa and Cuba, in the first fifteen years of the foundation the donations were anonymous, which earned it the nickname of the James Bond of philanthropy, notes the BBC. "He cared more about making a positive difference than being successful in business," Christopher Oechsli, president of Atlantic, noted in the note about his death.
He also applied it to his life. After launching the foundation he began to live a frugal life. His $10 watch, plastic bags used as work briefcases, and his preference to fly economy class are just a few examples. He didn't own a home either: he lived in a rental apartment in San Francisco.
Feeney was married and had five children from his first marriage.
