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Charles F Feeney, the billionaire Irish-American entrepreneur and philanthropist, passed away at 92 in San Francisco on Monday. He was a pioneer of duty-free shops and gave almost all of his $8 billion fortune away to charity via his Atlantic Philanthropies private foundation.
The Atlantic Philanthropies, a group of foundations founded and supported by Mr Feeney since the early 1980s, announced his death. By the time of its dissolution in 2020, the foundation had distributed over $8 billion in grants to multiple countries, including the United States, the U.K., the Republic of Ireland, Australia, South Africa, Vietnam, Bermuda, and Cuba. Mr Feeney’s legacy also includes $570 million donated to charities in Northern Ireland during the previous forty years.
Feeney was a graduate of the Ivy League Cornell University who made his fortune when he co-founded Duty Free Shoppers, a chain of airport stores, along with a college friend, Robert Miller. He sold the company to LVMH in 1996. In retirement, Feeney adopted the ‘Giving While Living’ lifestyle, dedicating his life to contributing to causes – and most of his $8billion fortune – he believed in.
‘It’s much more fun to give while you are alive than to give when you are dead,’ he said in the biography, The Billionaire Who Wasn’t.
He is survived by his wife, Helga and his five children and 16 grandchildren.
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