Irish businessman and rugby player (1936–2024)
Rugby player
Sir Anthony John Francis O'Reilly (7 May 1936 – 18 May 2024) was an Irish businessman and international rugby union player. He was known for his try scoring in rugby, his involvement in the Independent News &amp; Media Group, which he led from 1973 to 2009, and as CEO and chairman of the H.J. Heinz Company. He was the leading shareholder of Waterford Wedgwood and a founder and major supporter of The Ireland Funds. A citizen of both Ireland and the United Kingdom, he was knighted as a Knight Bachelor for his services to Northern Ireland.
As a rugby player, he represented Ireland, the British and Irish Lions and the Barbarians and is enshrined as a member of the International Rugby Board's Hall of Fame. In business, he was noted for multiple successful roles, and became a billionaire, but by 2014, was being pursued in the Irish courts for debts amounting to €22 million by AIB, following losses amounting to hundreds of millions of euros in his unsuccessful attempt to save the Waterford Wedgwood group and to stop Denis O'Brien from assuming control of Independent News &amp; Media.
O'Reilly had six children from his first marriage, and 23 grandchildren, and was later married to Greek shipping heiress Chryss Goulandris, who died in 2023. He lived in Lyford Cay in the Bahamas until 2017, when the property was sold for less than €12 million as part of a bankruptcy arrangement. O'Reilly later lived in Château des Ducs de Normandie in Bonneville-sur-Touques in France and in County Kildare, Ireland. He died, after a short illness, at a hospital in Dublin on 18 May 2024, at the age of 88.
Early years.
Background.
O'Reilly was born in Dublin and was the only child of a civil servant, John O'Reilly (1906–1976), and Aileen O'Connor (1914–1989). O'Reilly's Drogheda-born father, eventually an inspector-general of customs, was born "Reilly" and added the "O"' when he applied to join the Irish Civil Service. Previously married with four older children, but estranged from his first wife, John O'Reilly married Aileen O'Connor in 1973, after the death of his first wife and only a little time after he had told his son of his other family. O'Reilly had been told about the situation by a Jesuit when he was 15, but kept it secret. He arranged for the John and Aileen O'Reilly Library at Dublin City University to be named after his parents, and O'Reilly Hall at University College Dublin to be named after his father, who had studied there.
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.
Education.
Educated at Belvedere College from the age of six, O'Reilly participated in several sports, including soccer, cricket, tennis, and rugby union. As a youth, he played soccer for Home Farm. In cricket he was a member of the Junior Cup-winning team in 1950; in tennis, he was in a Leinster Schools Cup-winning team and reached the under-15 national semi-finals. He was also noted for his acting skills (and participated in Gilbert and Sullivan operettas such as "Iolanthe", and Dunsany's "A Night at an Inn"). He was an altar boy, and a regular attendee at chapel, and during his time there spent a summer in the Gaeltacht to improve his Irish language skills. He passed the Leaving Certificate at 17, and with four schoolmates, studied philosophy, still at Belvedere, for a year after this, while developing his rugby. He was a prefect for his last two years at the school, and a senior member of a key sodality.
O'Reilly went on to study law at University College Dublin and then at the Incorporated Law Society of Ireland. 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. He never practised after training, but later became chairman of the major Dublin solicitors' firm now known as Matheson.
O'Reilly earned a PhD in agricultural marketing from the University of Bradford, and in addition, held at least one honorary doctorate.
Rugby Union career.
Ireland.
Between 1955 and 1970 O'Reilly won 29 caps for Ireland. His Five Nations career of 15 years, 23 days is the longest in history, a record shared with fellow Ireland player Mike Gibson. He made his senior international debut, aged just 18, against France on 22 January 1955. He scored his four tries for Ireland against France on 28 January 1956; against Scotland on 25 February 1956; against Wales in 1959; and against France in 1963. He made his final appearance for Ireland on 14 February 1970, after a six-year absence from the national team, against England. This final appearance was an 11th-hour replacement, denying Frank O'Driscoll—father of Brian, Ireland's most-capped player—what would prove to be his only chance at a Test cap.
British and Irish Lions.
O'Reilly toured twice with the British Lions, on their 1955 tour to South Africa and their 1959 tour to Australia and New Zealand. He made his debut for the Lions on 26 June 1955, scoring two tries against a Northern Universities XV. He played 15 games during the 1955 tour, scoring 16 tries. This included hat-tricks against a North Eastern Districts XV on 20 July and Transvaal on 23 July. He also played in all four Tests against South Africa, making his Test debut on the right wing before a crowd of 95,000 at Ellis Park on 6 August. He scored a try in the Lions 23–22 victory. He scored another try in the fourth Test on 24 September.
On the 1959 tour, he played a further 23 games and scored 22 tries. This included a hat-trick against King Country/Counties on 19 August. He played in all six tests, two against Australia and four against New Zealand. He scored tries in the two test wins against Australia and in the first and fourth tests against New Zealand. His total of 38 tries for the Lions on two tours remains a record.
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. He remains the Barbarians record holder for both appearances and tries.
Later rugby involvement.
O'Reilly was a member of the IRFU Commercial Committee. He was in the first class of inductees into the International Rugby Hall of Fame in 1997, and was inducted into the IRB Hall of Fame in 2009.
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. 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.
Irish semi-state sector.
O'Reilly joined "An Bord Bainne", the Irish Dairy Board, in 1962, as General Manager, and developed the successful Kerrygold "umbrella brand" for Irish export butter. In 1966 he became Managing Director of the Irish Sugar Company. He soon developed a joint venture for freeze-drying food with the H. J. Heinz Co.
Heinz.
In 1969, after discussions with the then Taoiseach Jack Lynch, who offered him a post such as Minister for Agriculture if he would stay, O'Reilly joined Heinz. There he made his name in international business, becoming managing director of the Heinz subsidiary in the UK, its largest non-US holding and the source of half of the group's profit.
He moved to the company HQ in Pittsburgh in 1971 when he was promoted to senior vice-president for the North America and Pacific region. In 1973, R. Burt Gookin and Jack Heinz made him COO and President. He became CEO in 1979 when Mr. Gookin, then vice-chairman and chief executive officer, retired.
He became chairman of Heinz in 1987, succeeding HJ Heinz II, and becoming the first non-Heinz family member to hold that post. His guidance was seen as having helped transform the company into a major international competitor, its value increasing twelvefold (from $908 million to $11 billion). O'Reilly left Heinz in 1998 after several years during which analysts questioned the company's performance, and after challenges from corporate governance groups and major pension funds including CalPERS and Business Week magazine; he was succeeded by his deputy, William R. Johnson.
Other business interests.
During his time at Heinz, O'Reilly held roles as a major shareholder and chairman of several companies, including Waterford Wedgwood (1995–2009) and Independent News &amp; Media, and of a major partnership of solicitors, Matheson, in Dublin. Provision for him to do this was written into his contract before he went to the United States. After he left Heinz, he focused on three of these: Independent News &amp; Media; Waterford Wedgwood; and Fitzwilton; and later, for a brief time, Eircom. He was the main shareholder in Arcon, the Irish base-metal mining company that developed the Galmoy lead-zinc deposit, the company being co-founded with Richard Conroy, and later sold to Lundin Mining in 2005. He also retained a 40% stake in Providence Resources Plc, the Irish-based oil and gas exploration and development company.
Independent News &amp; Media.
O'Reilly bought into Independent News &amp; Media (INM), a Dublin-based print media company, in 1973, and at peak, held over 28% of its shares, with leverage over more than 29.5% with family and other connected parties. 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), Australia (from 1988) and New Zealand (from 1995), acquiring 38 newspaper titles, over 70 radio stations, cable and telecoms interests at a cost of around €1.3 billion. In the United Kingdom, INM took control of the national broadsheet "The Independent" in 1995, edging out MGN and Prisa. The company had over 200 national and regional newspaper and magazine titles in total, revenues of €1.7 billion and profits of €110.7 million, and assets of around €4.7 billion as well as debts in the region of €1.3 billion.
On Friday 13 March 2009, it was announced that on O'Reilly's 73rd birthday, 7 May, he would resign as both CEO and a member of the board of INM, to be succeeded by his son, Gavin. Further, the often-criticised large size of the board would be reduced from 17 to 10 and would include three nominees of Denis O'Brien. These announcements were actioned, and O'Reilly became President Emeritus of the group. The markets reacted positively to the news, especially to the explicit truce between the O'Reilly and O'Brien shareholder blocs, with Denis O'Brien voicing public support for Gavin O'Reilly as CEO-designate. The O'Reilly shareholding was diluted sharply from 2009.
Interests beyond INM.
Among other investments, O'Reilly had at various times interests in:
Lockwood and E-mat.
In 1996, in conjunction with his brother-in-law Petros Goulandris, he along with CEO Leonard Reinhart backed a management team that created Lockwood Financial Partners, which was named after friend Jim Lockwood who was a colleague and fee-based pioneer, and its sister company E-MAT (EMAT) which was founded by Leonard Reinhart and Jay N. Whipple to provide the first common operating program for separately managed accounts (SMAs). EMAT and the wealth management firm Lockwood, which was originally formed as Lockwood Advisors in 1995, 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 both firms were sold to the Bank of New York (BoNY) in 2002, while Gerald L Hassell was president of BoNY, that folded Lockwood and Pershing LLC into the BNY Securities Group under the Pershing umbrella in October 2003 with Joseph M. Velli heading the BoNY Securities Group which would allow BoNY to compete against U.S. Trust, J.P. Morgan Chase, as well as those more brokerage-oriented organizations for private banking clients. Prior to