Tony O'Reilly
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Birth name | Anthony Joseph Francis O'Reilly | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Date of birth | 7 May 1936 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Place of birth | Dublin, Ireland | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
School | Belvedere College | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
University | University College Dublin University of Bradford | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Notable relative(s) | Spouses Susan Cameron Chryss Goulandris Children Cameron O'Reilly Gavin O'Reilly Tony O'Reilly, Junior | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Rugby union career | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Sir Anthony Joseph Francis O'Reilly
As a rugby player, he represented
Early years
Parents
O'Reilly was born in
O'Reilly, named "Tony" after his mother's favourite brother, grew up on Griffith Avenue, a broad middle-class street in the Drumcondra/Glasnevin area of Dublin. He had prominent red hair. He holidayed with family, including an aunt in Balbriggan, cousins in Sligo and others in Drogheda. In 1951, the family moved to a bungalow in Santry.[citation needed]
Education
Educated at
O'Reilly went on to study law at University College Dublin and then at the Incorporated Law Society of Ireland.[8] He came fifth in Ireland in intermediate exams in 1956, and first and third in the country in final examinations in 1958, and was enrolled as a solicitor in November 1958.[9] He never practised after training, but later became chairman of the major Dublin solicitors' firm now known as Matheson.[10]
O'Reilly earned a
Rugby Union career
Ireland
Between
British Lions
O'Reilly toured twice with the
On the 1959 tour, he played a further 23 games and scored 22 tries. This included a hat-trick against
Barbarians
Between 1955 and 1963, O'Reilly also made 30 appearances and scored 38 tries for the Barbarians. He made his debut on 9 April 1955 in a 6–3 win against Cardiff, and his final appearance against Swansea on 15 April 1963. On the Barbarians' 1958 tour of South Africa, O'Reilly scored 12 tries, seven of them in the game against East Africa.[17] He remains the Barbarians record holder for both appearances [18] and tries.[19]
Later rugby involvement
O'Reilly was a member of the
Business career
O'Reilly went from college to work as a management consultant for Weston-Evans in Ashby-de-la-Zouch, Leicestershire, he earned £200 annually, which was a very good salary by the then Irish standards.[22] While there, he continued his rugby career, with Leicester. His work included cost accounting and time-and-motion studies, in industries ranging from shoe-making to pottery.
He then moved to Sutton's of Cork, selling agricultural products, coal and oil.[citation needed]
Irish Semi-State sector
He joined
In February 1963, O'Reilly was involved in an accident between Urlingford and Johnstown, when his car struck a cyclist, who was injured. Locals testified that the injured man was careless, he had no lights or reflector, and had been on the wrong side of the road. O'Reilly was convicted of driving with undue care, and fined 4 pounds, and since then he has rarely driven, especially at night.[23]
Heinz
In 1969, after discussions with the Taoiseach Jack Lynch, who offered him a post such as Minister for Agriculture if he would stay,[24] O'Reilly joined Heinz. There he made his name in international business, becoming MD of the Heinz subsidiary in the UK, its largest non-US holding and the source of half of the group profit.
He moved to the company HQ in
He became Chairman of Heinz in 1987, succeeding
Other business interests
During his time at Heinz, O'Reilly held roles as a major shareholder and chairman of several companies, including
Independent News & Media
O'Reilly bought into Independent News & Media (INM), a Dublin-based print media company, in 1973, and having held over 28%, with leverage over more than 29.5% with family and other connected parties, had his shareholding diluted sharply since 2009. He pushed the company to expand into other national markets and to increase its reach in Ireland. In the 1990s INM bought into South Africa (from 1994),
Interests beyond IN&M
Among other investments, O'Reilly has or had until recently, interests in:
- Fitzwilton, an industrial holding and investment company established with friends (Ferguson and Leonard) in the early 1970s. Over the years, the Company has been involved in numerous business activities ranging from textiles, to house construction, to fertiliser manufacturing, to bottling, to oil and gas investments, to supermarkets to light manufacturing. Taken private in the late 1990s in conjunction with his brother-in-law, the company is now involved in light manufacturing, property investments, financial services and architectural signage
- Waterford Wedgwood Plc, the majority of which was placed in administration on 5 January 2009, and of which he was chairman until that date
- Providence Resources Plc, an Irish-based oil and gas exploration and production company, in which he holds a stake of at least 40%. The company has interests in Ireland, the UK, the US and Nigeria
- Landis+Gyr, one of the world's largest smart metering companies, in which he held a 7% stake prior to its sale to Toshiba
Lockwood and E-mat
In conjunction with his brother-in-law, in 1996, he backed a management team that created Lockwood Financial Partners (and its sister company E-mat)[citation needed]. Lockwood, based in Malvern Pennsylvania, specialised in providing independent financial investment advisory services to brokers of high-net-worth individuals, and went on to become one of the largest independent advisory companies in the United States before being sold to Bank of New York in 2001. At the time, assets under management were estimated to be in excess of $11 billion.
Eircom and Valentia
He was part of the Valentia consortium that bought into
Charitable works
O'Reilly has sponsored and supported a wide range of charitable activities and continues to do so. Many of these, such as the many-year support of a Professorship in Australian Studies at UCD, were arranged together with his first wife, and likewise today, he and his current wife will often jointly support an activity, such as sponsorship of a gallery at the National Science Historical Museum adjacent to Birr Castle. He has shown a particular interest in naming rights, where a contribution to a project, generally of 5% to 20%, allows a donor to add a name to the project, and has received at least one such "name" as a gift.
Kilcullen
O'Reilly has supported many local initiatives, from floral street displays and signage for local nature walks in
The O'Reilly Foundation
The
Both through the Foundation and before its inception, O'Reilly has contributed to a range of University projects in Ireland, with notable examples at Dublin City University, University College Dublin, Trinity College Dublin and Queen's University Belfast.
O'Reilly also paid for the construction of the state-of-the-art 600-seat O'Reilly Theatre in
Trinity College Dublin
O'Reilly has contributed towards the O'Reilly Institute, backed the development of Jewish Studies, and supported the Chair in Neuroscience. He was a Pro-Chancellor of the University of Dublin from 1994 until retiring on age grounds at the end of the 2010/2011 academic year, and was also a member of the board of the Trinity Foundation.[32]
University College Dublin
O'Reilly supported his alma mater, UCD, by funding the O'Reilly Hall, named in honour of his parents. This building is a major focal point of the UCD campus and in addition to its use for exams, the hall is now a leading venue for large events in Dublin.[citation needed]
Dublin City University
The John and Aileen O`Reilly Library at Dublin City University was named in honour of his parents, as the O`Reilly Foundation contributed a substantial sum to the library's capital costs in 2000.[citation needed]
Queen's University Belfast
The new library currently[
The Ireland Funds
The American Ireland Fund, now the central entity in
Personal life
Family
O'Reilly was first engaged in 1958, to Dorothy Connolly, whom he had met in 1954, with the marriage planned for 1959.[35]
O'Reilly met his first wife, Australian secretary and pianist Susan M. Cameron, the daughter of a wealthy Australian mining figure in whose name he endowed a professorship at UCD for at least a decade, in 1959 in Australia, after she was suggested as a social contact when he was touring for rugby. After courting her when she moved to London, they married in 1962. He had six children by her, born 1963–66: Susan Wildman, Anthony Cameron O'Reilly (generally "Cameron"), Justine O'Reilly, Gavin O'Reilly, Caroline Dempsey, and St John Anthony ("Tony Junior"); the last three are triplets. All three boys are involved in family business interests, while the daughters are not known to be, the eldest being a qualified pilot, the second a lawyer and the third a full-time mother. The eldest daughter took a bachelor's degree at Yale, and a master's degree in history at Oxford.[36]
All the O'Reilly children married and O'Reilly has 19 grandchildren. Youngest daughter Caroline was married at the restored Church of St. Mary at Castlemartin Estate on 1 June 1991, while eldest child Susan O'Reilly married investment banker Tarik C. Wildman (1959–) on 14 August 1993 before an Episcopal dean[36] at the same church. Gavin O'Reilly married Alison Doody there some years later.
The O'Reillys separated in the late 1980s, and Susan O'Reilly settled in London, in a house bought by O'Reilly. Susan O'Reilly died in 2014.
Shortly after, O'Reilly married Chryss Goulandris, a Greek shipping heiress, who breeds and races thoroughbred horses as "Skymarc Farms" and under other names, and who owns stud farms in Normandy and other locations. Chryss is well known on the racecourses of Ireland, Britain and France as Lady O'Reilly and is very knowledgeable on all aspects of the equine industry. They first met in New York, when Chryss accompanied her brother to a business meeting.
The wedding took place in the Bahamas on 4 September 1991. Chryss made a naming gift in her husband's honour in 1999 with the
Residences
A number of homes are associated with O'Reilly, including his former main residence, Lissadell Tamura, with a beach in the private
In late 1995, he and his wife purchased a former solicitor's office, a four-storey Georgian house at 2 Fitzwilliam Square, Dublin, with a courtyard and coach house with a separate entrance. The 1 million Irish pound house, formerly owned by railway pioneer William Dargan, was a base when travel to Castlemartin was not feasible, and a place for meetings and his private office.[42] O'Reilly also has a holiday compound, Shorecliffe, comprising several houses, garden areas and two swimming pools, by the sea in Glandore, County Cork.
The O'Reillys also owned a chateau "built on the ruins of the castle where William the Conqueror plotted his 1066 invasion of England" at Deauville in France.[39]
For many years a key O'Reilly residence was a 34-room mock Tudor house of 8,000 square feet (740 m2) at
The residential complex in Glandore, the house on Fitzwilliam Square and the Castlemartin Estate have all since been auctioned off at sales forced by O'Reilly's creditors.[3] O'Reilly now lives in Chateau des Ducs de Normandie in Bonneville-sur-Touques in France.[3][4]
Sporting interests
O'Reilly's sons have noted that he is still a keen player of tennis. For a period in the 1990s O'Reilly chaired a committee set up by the then Lord Mayor of Dublin, Gay Mitchell, aiming to bring the Olympic Games to Dublin in 2004.
Art collection
The O'Reillys have been significant art collectors for many years, with the biggest known acquisition being Monet's Le Portail (Soleil), bought in 2000, at Sotheby's of London, for $US24 million,
Awards and honours
In 1978, O'Reilly was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Laws (LLD) by Trinity College Dublin.[citation needed]
In 1988, he was appointed an Honorary Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) for services to Irish-Australian relationships.[citation needed]
O'Reilly was
Wealth and bankruptcy
In May 2014, The Sunday Times reported that O'Reilly and his wife had a net worth of around US$545 million, down sharply from March 2012, when the Sunday Independent reported that O'Reilly had a net worth of €1 billion, excluding his wife's estimated €300 million from her shipping family inheritances.[48]
O'Reilly became locked in a legal case with a State-controlled bank, AIB (
In the wake of AIB's €22.6 million judgment debt against him, O'Reilly filed for bankruptcy in March 2016. His lawyers disclosed that he had liabilities of more than €170 million and realisable assets of only €23 million.
O'Reilly's former long-time nurse and assistant of 13 years, Sabina Vidunas, filed a lawsuit against O'Reilly in Pennsylvania in 2013, claiming that he owed her $40 million stock in a deal that he reneged on. O'Reilly's lawyers argued that his Bahamas bankruptcy applied also in America and thus negated her claim, however the US Bankruptcy Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania declared that O'Reilly could not claim that his Bahamas bankruptcy automatically applied in the United States, because by then his "center of main interests" did not lie in the Bahamas" but in France, where he had settled since the case began. Because no evidence was presented of "any operations or nontransitory economic activity in the Bahamas", the Bahamian bankruptcy would probably not be recognised for a lesser, "non-main center", argument either. Vidunas's lawsuit was still ongoing as of 2020.[51]
Biography
An authorised biography, The Player: The Life of Tony O'Reilly, was written by Ivan Fallon, a journalist and biographer in the early 1990s, later a senior executive at one of O'Reilly's companies,[52] and was for many years the only study of any length. O'Reilly facilitated the project, and the author was given access to family members, including past and current wives, and to staff and business colleagues. Fallon insisted in the foreword that he had complete discretion on what to include and how to tell it, excluding only some private family matters. While giving great detail on some business matters, the book says almost nothing about O'Reilly's children and little of his second wife. It gives considerable detail on business matters and questions some of O'Reilly's assertions, notably about his Irish business interests. It also gives much information on O'Reilly's parents' situations and especially his father's family, some of which the author notes even O'Reilly did not have until the book gathered it, and includes some detail about his residences.[citation needed]
In 2015, another biography of O'Reilly was written by journalist
See also
- List of billionaires
References
- ^ a b Dublin, Ireland, The Irish Times, Friday 13 May (quoted at eircom.net also), and Saturday 14 May 2009 Archived 14 March 2009 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ "AIB case against O'Reilly for Commercial Court". RTÉ.ie. 26 May 2014. Archived from the original on 27 May 2014.
- ^ a b c d Mulligan, John (3 April 2017). "O'Reilly's beachfront trophy home in Bahamas sold for €12m". Irish Independent.
- ^ a b "Ex-tycoon's nurse fights on for millions". 27 January 2020.
- ^ The Daily Telegraph, London, U.K.: "The Real O'Reilly", 9 August 2004, Martin Baker
- ^ The Irish Times, Dublin, Ireland, 12 February 1994: Weekend section, page 3, "Paperchaser", Jim Dunne
- ^ Fallon, pp. 32–33
- ^ Fallon, pp. 58–59
- ^ Fallon, p. 86
- ^ a b "Law Firm – Ireland – Legal Services". Matheson. Archived from the original on 21 July 2011.
- ^ "Heinz Co. CEO Anthony O'Reilly to be Laetare speaker March 17". newspapers.bc.edu. Vol. 5, no. 12. Boston College Biweekly. 28 February 1985. Retrieved 20 November 2023.
- ^ "Big Shot". The Times. 4 February 2004. Retrieved 20 November 2023.
- ^ a b c "Comeback kings". Scrum Sevens. ESPN Scrum. 16 December 2010. Archived from the original on 17 December 2010. Retrieved 16 December 2010.
- ^ Tony O'Reilly Archived 22 November 2007 at the Wayback Machine Irish Rugby: Player search
- ^ Although called the British and Irish Lions since 2001, in the 1950s the team was known as the British Lions; the term 'British' referring to the entire British Isles, rather than the United Kingdom.
- ^ Tony O'Reilly Archived 30 August 2016 at the Wayback Machine The British & Irish Lions
- ISBN 0-86007-552-4
- ^ Most Appearances Archived 5 April 2009 at the Wayback Machine Barbarians RFC
- ^ Most Tries Archived 5 April 2009 at the Wayback Machine Barbarians RFC
- ^ "Tony O'Reilly". International Rugby Hall of Fame. Archived from the original on 14 September 2012. Retrieved 30 October 2009.
- ^ "IRB Hall of Fame: The 2009 Induction" (PDF) (Press release). International Rugby Board. 27 October 2009. Archived from the original (PDF) on 16 May 2011. Retrieved 28 October 2009.
- ^ Fallon, pp. 89–91
- ^ Fallon, pp. 140–142
- ^ "O'Reilly reveals agriculture request". Irish Examiner. 31 July 2006. Retrieved 20 November 2023.
- ^ Salmans, Sandra (2 August 1981). "GLAMOUR IN THE BOARDROOM, CAUTION IN THE FOOD GAME". The New York Times. Retrieved 20 November 2023.
- ^ Nauright, John (2 July 2007). "Tony O'Reilly". Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica, inc.
- ^ Wachman, Richard (11 January 2009). "Cracks in O'Reilly's crystal". the Guardian. Retrieved 20 November 2023.
- ^ a b Business Week, 15 September 1997, Lead cover story: "The CEO and the Board"
- ^ Dublin, Ireland: The Irish Times, p.1 and p.14, "O'Reilly buys SA papers"
- ^ "Dublin, Ireland: INM Preliminary Results, 2007" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 3 November 2013.
- ^ "O'Reilly Theatre". Archived from the original on 22 November 2015.
- ^ Development, Trinity College Dublin (13 July 2015). "Development". tcd.ie. Archived from the original on 13 January 2012.
- ^ "Queen's University Belfast – The Sir Anthony O'Reilly Library". Archived from the original on 2 June 2008.
- ^ "O'Reilly removes his name from new Queen's University Library – Sunday Business Post, Sunday 26 April 2009, Nicola Cooke".[permanent dead link]
- ^ Fallon, pp. 91–92
- ^ a b New York, New York, US: The New York Times, 15 August 1993, Weddings: "Susan O'Reilly and Tarik Wildman"
- ^ Forbes Magazine: Forbes, Power Couples, retrieved April 2008
- ^ Peacock, Tom (25 August 2023). "'She'll be sadly missed' - death of leading owner-breeder Lady O'Reilly aged 73". Racing Post. Retrieved 25 August 2023.
- ^ a b Pittsburgh, 22 July 2001: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, "Living large; Anthony O'Reilly rules a global business empire, enchants all those in his sphere and is now addressed as "Sir", Cristina Rouvalis
- ^ Leinster Leader, 17 October 2007: Auction Watch
- ^ The Irish Times, 11 October 2007, Property: Sales Results
- ^ Dublin, Ireland / The Irish Times / Siobhan Creaton / 8 March 1996 / p29, Business This Week / "Fitzwilliam Square", "O'Reilly buys period home in Dublin Square"
- ^ The Irish Times, Dublin, Ireland: Property, 8 August 2000, from the Wall Street Journal
- ^ London, UK: The Evening Standard, 3 March 2004, William Cash, "The Luck of the Irish"
- ^ United Kingdom list: "No. 56070". The London Gazette (Supplement). 30 December 2000. p. 2.
- ^ "Written Answers – Foreign Honours". Dáil Éireann debates. 580 (6). Dublin: Oireachtas: 75. 25 February 2004. Retrieved 17 March 2022.
- ^ As a result of the British Nationality Act 1948, Irish citizens (citizens of the Republic of Ireland) no longer had British subject status from 1 January 1949 if they did not acquire citizenship of the UK & Colonies or that of another Commonwealth country, notwithstanding that the Irish Free State did not cease to be one of His Majesty's dominions until 18 April 1949. However, section 2 of the Act allowed certain Irish citizens who were British subjects before 1949 to apply at any time to the Secretary of State to remain British subjects. Applications had to be based on: previous Crown service under the United Kingdom government; possession of a British passport; or associations by way of descent, residence or otherwise with the United Kingdom or any Crown colony, protectorate, UK-mandated territory or UK trust territory.
- ^ "Ireland's Rich List 2012". Sunday Independent. 11 March 2012.
- ^ a b c d e "Tony O'Reilly: one-time richest businessman owes debts". BBC. 27 June 2014. Archived from the original on 17 October 2015. Retrieved 3 June 2015.
- ^ Carswell, Simon (19 January 2019). "Anthony O'Reilly was almost €150m in the red in 2016". The Irish Times. Retrieved 3 October 2021.
- ^ Murphy, Tim (27 January 2020). "Ex tycoon's nurse fights on for millions". Newsroom. Retrieved 3 October 2021.
- ^ Fallon
- ^ "New Biography Of Tony O'Reilly – BizPlus". bizplus.ie. 18 September 2015. Archived from the original on 21 April 2016. Retrieved 25 April 2018.
Cited sources
- Fallon, Ivan (1994) The Player: The Life of Tony O'Reilly. Coronet. ISBN 0340639792
External links
- The O`Reilly Foundation Archived 16 June 2008 at the Wayback Machine
- Forbes.com: Forbes World's Richest People at archive.today (archived 31 July 2012)
- Sir Anthony O'Reilly speech at The Ireland Funds Gala Evening 2007 (video)
- Tony O'Reilly at the World Rugby Hall of Fame