Anthony JF O’Reilly, a charming, talented, Irish-born former chairman of the HJ Heinz Company who also owned newspapers, luxury brands and trophy homes in France and the Bahamas, only to lose almost everything in his eighth decade. died 18 May in Dublin. It was 88.
The Irish Times and other Irish newspapers, citing a family spokesman, said he died in hospital. No reason was given.
From his earliest years, Mr. O’Reilly, who was known as Tony, showed an embarrassment for gifts. He was a top rugby player while still in his teens – the “red-headed pinup boy of Irish rugby”, as The Guardian put it. His talent for business was equally precocious.
At 26, as head of marketing for the Irish Dairy Board, he created the Kerrygold brand to sell Irish butter to English grocers. it is still one of the country’s best-known global exports.
Mr. O’Reilly was recruited by Heinz to run its British operations in 1969, then moved to the company’s headquarters in Pittsburgh, where he rose to chief executive 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 most charismatic entrepreneurs in the world.”
“He has a million stories and he tells them all well,” Heinz director Richard M. Cyert told Business Week in 1997. “When you sit down to lunch with him, it’s like going to a movie theater for entertainment.” .
Mr. O’Reilly played tennis at the White House with President George W. Bush, who reportedly considered him for commerce secretary. He helped create the Irish Funds, whose promotion of peace projects in Northern Ireland undermined the Irish Democratic Army’s fundraising among Irish Americans. Queen Elizabeth II knighted him for his service to Northern Ireland in 2001.
Mr. O’Reilly had a highly unusual deal at Heinz that also allowed him to build his own business empire. He would fly to Dublin on the Gulfstream jet after work on Fridays, popping in for meetings and sometimes a rugby match. Then he would return to Pittsburgh to be at his office by 8 a.m. Monday.
Perhaps more successfully than any other businessman, he led 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.
He founded his newspaper group, Independent News & Media, by buying The Irish Independent, the country’s leading newspaper, in 1973. It grew to more than 100 properties, including The Independent in London and newspapers in Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, bringing Mr O’Reilly access and influence to political leaders.
In 1990, he bought Waterford Wedgwood, the Anglo-Irish crystal and china company, with the ambition of turning it into a global luxury group along the lines of Gucci and LVMH.
Mr. O’Reilly acquired the lifestyle and celebrity friends to match his prestigious businesses. His base in Ireland 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 chateau in Deauville, France. His art collection included a $24.2 million Monet and works by Picasso and Matisse.
Although Mr. O’Reilly built his fortune on his generous compensation from Heinz, the company’s brands did not reflect his ambitious tastes. He once said of the ubiquitous Heinz ketchup, according to The Irish Times, “We make it, like chunk, chunk, chunk, every day in 100 factories around the world.” Newspaper ownership, on the other hand, offered “more than you can get from beans,” he said.
It didn’t stop him from lavishly spending Heinz’s money in an attempt to inject glamor into 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, even though the company’s business results had been disappointing for several years. “Tony O’Reilly’s ego and salary are bigger than his achievements,” wrote the magazine.
He stepped down as CEO of Heinz the following year, although he remained chairman until 2000. In the early 1960s, he turned his full-time attention to his own businesses, which, in addition to newspapers and luxury goods , included oil exploration and a company that turned 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, his ventures came to a screeching halt. He lost control of the media properties to a long-time rival Irish tycoon, Dennis O’Brien.
In 2009, Waterford Wedgewood, into which Mr O’Reilly had poured large personal sums, failed and went into receivership.
Stalked by creditors, he sold many of his artworks and his beloved Castlemartin, which was bought by American telecommunications billionaire John Malone for 7.4 million euros, or about $10.2 million, in 2015.
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 on 7 May 1936 in Dublin, the only child of John and Eileen O’Connor. 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, with whom he had four children, for Tony’s mother. 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 Britain and Ireland. He was the youngest Lions player and still holds the record for most tries – the equivalent of a football touchdown – in test matches (matches against other national or regional teams).
On a rugby tour to 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, Chrysi Goulandris, a Greek heiress of shipping man 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.”
