Anthony J. F. O'Reilly, the charming, career-hungry Irish-born former chairman of H.J. Heinz who owned newspapers, luxury brands, and luxury homes in France and the Bahamas but lost almost everything by the time he was in his 80s, died in Dublin on May 18. He was 88 years old.
Irish newspapers, including The Irish Times, reported he died in hospital, citing a family spokesman. The cause of death was not disclosed.
Tony O'Reilly, as he was known, was gifted from an early age — a top-level rugby player as a teenager, described by The Guardian as “Irish rugby's red-headed pin-up boy” — and an equally precocious businessman.
At the age of 26, as Marketing Director for the Irish Dairy Board, he launched the Kerrygold brand to sell Irish butter to British grocers – it remains one of Ireland's best-known global exports.
O'Reilly was recruited by Heinz in 1969 to run the company's UK operations, then moved to the company's Pittsburgh headquarters, where he was promoted to CEO and became the first non-Heinz family member to lead the company. Under his leadership, the value of Heinz increased 12-fold. Business Week magazine called him “one of the world's most charismatic businessmen.”
“He has too many stories to count, and he tells them all well,” Heinz Co. executive Richard M. Cyart told Businessweek in 1997. “Having lunch with him is like being entertained at the movies.”
O'Reilly played tennis with President George H. W. Bush at the White House, and the president reportedly considered him for Secretary of Commerce. He was instrumental in founding the Ireland Fund, but his promotion of peace projects in Northern Ireland hampered fundraising for the Irish Republican Army among Irish Americans. Queen Elizabeth knighted O'Reilly in 2001 for his services to Northern Ireland.
At Heinz, he had a highly unusual arrangement that also allowed him to build his business empire: After work on Fridays, he'd fly to Dublin on the company's Gulfstream jet, where he might attend a conference or a rugby match, then fly back to Pittsburgh and be in the office by 8 a.m. on Monday.
Perhaps more successful than any other entrepreneur, he rode the Irish economic boom of the 1990s and 2000s known as the Celtic Tiger to become Ireland's richest man and possibly the country's first billionaire.
O'Reilly founded his own newspaper group, Independent News & Media, in 1973 when he bought the Irish Independent, a leading Irish newspaper. The group grew to include more than 100 properties, including the Independent in London and newspapers in Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, giving O'Reilly access to and influence over political leaders.
In 1990, he bought Waterford Wedgwood, a British and Irish crystal and china company, with ambitions of building it into a global luxury goods group like Gucci or LVMH.
His prestigious business brought him the lifestyle and famous friends he needed: His Irish base, Castlemartin, is a 750-acre estate where guests include President Bill Clinton and Nelson Mandela.
He also owned a Georgian mansion in Dublin, a seaside estate on Lyford Cay in the Bahamas, and a château in Deauville, France. His art collection included works by Monet, Picasso and Matisse, worth $24.2 million.
O'Reilly made his fortune from big paydays with Heinz, but the company's mundane brands didn't reflect his aspirational tastes: “They churn it out, churn, churn, every day in 100 factories around the world,” he once said of Heinz's ubiquitous ketchup, according to The Irish Times. But running newspapers, he said, gave him “more than you can get from baked beans.”
That didn't stop him from spending Heinz money lavishly to give the company glamour, inviting hundreds of guests to Ireland for its annual gala and thoroughbred race, the Heinz 57 Stakes.
In 1996, Forbes named him the fourth-highest paid chief executive officer in the United States, despite several years of disappointing performance at the company. “Tony O'Reilly's ego and salary are bigger than his accomplishments,” the magazine wrote.
He stepped down as Heinz's chief executive the following year but remained as chairman until 2000. By his early 60s, he had focused on his own businesses, which included newspapers, luxury goods, oil exploration and a company that converted castles into hotels.
Like many business empires, Mr. O'Reilly's was built on debt, and when the global financial crisis hit like a Category 5 hurricane in 2008, Mr. O'Reilly's businesses imploded and he lost control of his media assets to a longtime rival, Irish businessman Denis O'Brien.
In 2009, Waterford Wedgwood, into which O'Reilly had invested a large amount of his own fortune, collapsed and went bankrupt.
Hunted by creditors, he sold many of his artworks as well as his beloved Castlemartin, which was bought by American telecoms billionaire John Malone for 7.4 million euros (about $10.2 million) in 2015.
At the time, O'Reilly owed eight banks 195 million euros ($268.9 million), according to his lawyers, and in 2015, at the age of 79, he filed for bankruptcy in the Bahamas.
Anthony John Francis O'Reilly was born in Dublin on 7 May 1936, the only child of John and Eileen O'Connor. His father was a civil servant.
According to Matt Cooper's 2015 biography of O'Reilly, “The Maximalist,” Tony learned at age 15 that his parents were not married. His father had left a wife with four children for Tony's mother. The two officially married in the mid-1970s.
Tony O'Reilly's career as an elite rugby player began in 1955, when he went on an international tour with the Lions, a team made up of the best players from Great Britain and Ireland, at the age of 19. He was the Lions' youngest player and still holds the record for the most tries (the equivalent of a touchdown in football) scored in a test match (a match against a team from another country or region).
Mr O'Reilly met Susan Cameron during a rugby tour of Australia and married her in 1962. They had six children, including triplets, before divorcing in 1990. His second wife was Greek shipping heir Chris Gourandris, whom he married in 1991 but died last year.
Mr. O'Reilly is survived by his sons Anthony Cameron, Gavin and St. John Anthony, daughters Susan Wildman, Justin O'Reilly and Caroline Dempsey, and 23 grandchildren.
In 2018, O'Reilly spoke at a tribute to friends and former teammates gathered at Dublin's Old Belvedere Rugby Club.
“Sometimes you win and sometimes you lose,” he said. “If you don't know how to lose, you don't know how to live.”
