The Billionaire Who Wasn't (23 page)

Then a newspaper article caught his eye, about the formation in Dublin of a body called the Irish American Partnership, inspired by Paddy Harte, a member of the Dail, the Irish parliament. Harte believed that there was tremendous goodwill toward Ireland among successful Irish Americans but that it wasn't being fully exploited to stimulate business development. Its director general, John Healy, was a shrewd and disarming diplomat, and a former executive of the Irish Trade Board. Feeney arranged to meet him in Dublin. Healy rang a high-level official at the Trade Board to find out in advance more about Feeney. They said they had never heard of him.

Feeney and Padraig Berry called at Healy's Dublin office on September 4, 1987. Healy wasn't sure what to make of Feeney as he briefed him on what the Partnership did. “This fellow sat there, you know, with the hooded eyes, not saying very much, looking at us intently,” he recalled. Finally he turned to Feeney and said, “What we need to do now is set up a counterpart organization in the U.S. That's where the action is. Could you advise me
where I could find money to do that?” Feeney didn't answer. But as they walked to lunch at the Kildare Street & University Club, Feeney told him that he knew a place in America that might entertain a proposal for a grant of $250,000. He suggested that Healy send the proposal to the Atlantic Foundation Service Company in Ithaca, care of Mr. Ray Handlan. After the lunch, Healy called a friend in New York who worked as a fund-raising professional and asked, “What's a foundation service company?” The friend replied, “I haven't a clue.” Healy put together his proposal and sent it off to Ithaca. A check for $250,000 duly arrived.

The Kildare Street & University Club was a favorite dining place for Irish academics, and as they made their way to a table that day, Healy introduced Feeney to Ed Walsh, head of the fifteen-year-old Limerick Institute of Higher Education, who was in Dublin to lobby for full university status. “Any time you are in the west, you might think of visiting Limerick,” said Walsh politely. Feeney replied, “I'll come down and talk to you.”

Three weeks later, Feeney turned up in Limerick. Walsh was wary of Irish Americans, who were often only concerned about why “the bloody British aren't out of Ireland” and arranged to give him the usual routine: tea in his office for fifteen minutes, then a tour of the campus, situated on rolling meadows by the River Shannon. But the visitor showed an extraordinary interest in his vision for the college and hinted at access to funds. Walsh said later that he knew enough not to ask for a donation, on the basis that “if you ask for money, you will get advice; if you ask for advice, you may eventually get support.” Berry recalled that Feeney allowed himself to be “baited and reeled in.”

Feeney got a blank stare when he asked Walsh how much funding Limerick received from its alumni. In Ireland, universities relied almost exclusively on state subvention. There was no culture of philanthropy, and no Irish educational institutions even had a foundation or a director of development.

“I could see very quickly they could absorb an awful lot of money,” recalled Feeney. “The university was on a magnificent site, but buildings were in rough condition. I recognized here was a school on the uptake and a charismatic leader. You need both things to support an organization.” Feeney was also attracted by the notion of helping the underdog: If Ireland was the underdog in Europe, Limerick was the underdog in the Irish academic world.

Feeney asked his host: “What's the best university in the United States?” Walsh reeled off a few names: “Stanford? Yale? Harvard?” “No, it's Cornell,”
said Feeney. “Would you like to come out there?” Walsh hesitated. His visitor wore off-the-peg clothes and a cheap watch and he had no idea who he really was or what he did. But an association with an Ivy League university in the United States would do no harm to his quest for full university status so he agreed.

Walsh traveled to New York in December and joined Chuck and Danielle in their Fifth Avenue apartment overlooking Central Park. Feeney disappeared and came back with some fresh bagels and cream cheese for Sunday brunch, after which they took the short flight to Ithaca, home of Cornell University in upstate New York.

“To my astonishment,” recalled Walsh, “Cornell had laid on a most exceptional visit for me. Whoever heard of Limerick, never mind of the National Institute of Higher Education in Limerick! But when we got out of the plane, the top brass was there to meet us. And clearly they were there because of Chuck.” It dawned on Walsh that Feeney was “no ordinary Joe Soap.” There were sly references to his generosity. Feeney introduced him to Ray Handlan, who told him that Cornell had raised more than $500 million in donations from alumni that year. This was a whole new world. The day ended with a private dinner for Walsh, hosted by Cornell president Frank Rhodes. “It was a puzzling meeting altogether,” recalled Rhodes, who also wondered what Feeney was up to. After the dinner, the Irish visitor invited Rhodes to visit Limerick, little expecting that any Ivy League university president would find time to come to his struggling institute.

Within weeks of Ed Walsh's return to Ireland, however, a steady stream of visitors began arriving from the United States: James Whelan, president of Ithaca College and his wife, Gillian; the Cornell dean of business, David Long; Chuck and Danielle with a group that included the dean of the Hotel School; Jack Clark and Ray Handlan; and then Chuck again with Frank Rhodes, who spent two days asking probing questions about how Limerick might develop.

One day Feeney called to say that a friend of his—a leading faculty member at New York University who specialized in the law relating to philanthropy—was in Europe and would like to visit the university. Maybe Walsh would show him around. His name was Harvey Dale.

Any friend of Feeney's was by now given the red carpet. Walsh and his wife, Stephanie, brought Dale and his then-wife Nan sailing on Lough Derg. They took them to dinner at a traditional restaurant near Bunratty.
The Dales stayed for a few days, asking questions and looking around. Without saying what his relationship with Feeney was, the New York lawyer took Ed Walsh aside to tell him that Feeney's potential to assist the university arose more from his network of contacts than from any personal wealth he might possess and that all funding would be anonymous. He also stressed that Feeney was not to be bothered by the press, that he should not be asked to pose for photographs or give interviews, and that failure to respect these conditions could jeopardize any help Feeney might bring to Limerick.

Walsh listened and nodded. He conveyed the conditions to his board. Some members expressed unease about taking money from anonymous sources. But Walsh was able to assure the directors that the conduit for the cash flow was a person highly respected in Ivy League circles in the United States.

Feeney became totally preoccupied with Limerick, recalled Padraig Berry. “The University of Limerick was coming out of my ears for six months afterward; it was all he would talk about.” Often Feeney would arrive at the university and wander about unrecognized. “What was so astonishing was his wish to be ordinary,” recalled Walsh.

One of the things that attracted Feeney to Limerick was the cocky attitude of the leadership and its intolerance for bureaucratic restrictions. He learned how Ed Walsh's decision in the late 1980s to raise funds for new student accommodations had been met with outrage and opposition from the Irish Higher Education Authority in Dublin. It was conventional wisdom that any rental fees from student accommodations would be insufficient to service a building loan. John O'Connor, the university's impish finance officer, circumvented the Department of Education by creating a private company that, being legally independent, could not be issued with any directive to stop construction. The first phase of the village was being completed when Feeney first showed up on campus, and eventually expanded to house 1,000 of the 6,000 students.

Limerick provided Feeney with an opportunity he was looking for, to raise the level of spending of his Atlantic Foundation to good effect. His first significant donation was for a concert hall that became a center of musical activity for the university and the city of Limerick. Atlantic put up IR£6 million, the equivalent of $10 million, and Ed Walsh successfully lobbied the Minister for Education Mary O'Rourke to match it. “In hindsight this initiative was one of enormous importance,” said Walsh, whose institute
was awarded university status in 1989. “Our success convinced the state bureaucracy that the concept of matching funds could indeed stimulate major private investment in the universities.”

Feeney and Frank Rhodes encouraged Walsh to establish a foundation to raise money and also to provide advice on the development of the university. In American universities, distinguished business and community leaders were avidly recruited to advise the president. Irish universities not only had no foundations, their governing bodies were made up largely of political appointees, who could be egocentric, pompous, and driven by political ambition.

Walsh brought the idea to his executive committee. There was an outcry. If they were successful in raising significant money, wouldn't the state use this as a pretext to reallocate its limited resources to other universities? But Walsh persisted. Much to the astonishment, and annoyance, of Harvey Dale, he then persuaded Chuck Feeney to become the first chairman of the Limerick University Foundation.

The interaction with Cornell and with Feeney stimulated Walsh to think big. He went to the United States to recruit prominent figures for his foundation board. He persuaded Jack Welch, then chairman of General Electric in Connecticut—who had never before heard of Limerick Institute of Higher Education—to send senior executive Frank Doyle to join the directors. Walsh also targeted Wall Street financier Lewis L. Glucksman. Born to a second-generation Hungarian Jewish family in New York, Glucksman had won control of Manhattan-based Lehman in an epic 1983 boardroom battle documented in the book
Greed and Glory on Wall Street
by Ken Auletta. Having visited Ireland as a young naval officer, he fell for the country and its literature and had made County Cork his second home. He was married to Loretta Brennan Glucksman, a famous Irish American beauty and philanthropist in New York.

Walsh and Feeney set up a meeting with Lew Glucksman in his Wall Street office. “Chuck was late,” said Walsh. “He explained that things were tied up on the subway. They both then recalled how when young they managed to ride the subway by getting through the turnstile without paying. Feeney quipped, ‘I was so small I could walk under it!' Glucksman said: ‘I was caught once. I was taken to the police station and I was put into a cell with three or four others. I said to one guy, a young chap like myself, ‘I am here because I did the subway and, why are you here?' And he says, ‘I killed my ma.'”

Glucksman joined the foundation board and became a major donor, eventually taking over from Feeney as chairman of the Limerick University Foundation. He and Feeney, who shared a liking for early nights, competed at foundation board dinners to see who could slip off first with good grace. The winner got a necktie.

To deflect inquiries about his anonymous source of funding, Ed Walsh let everyone think he was going off to America once a month and collecting a suitcase full of dollars from rich American businessmen. Astonishingly, this was widely believed. When Feeney was on campus, he was shielded, sometimes physically, from inquisitive eyes. People from Atlantic stood between Feeney and anyone with a camera. On one occasion guests thought they were being photographed, but the official photographer had been instructed not to put film in his camera. Faculty members who got to know who Feeney was declined to identify him at social gatherings. Legal counsel Paul Hannon recalled that when the
Limerick Leader
published a photograph showing Feeney, Harvey Dale ordered that all available copies of the newspaper be bought up and destroyed.

Feeney poked fun at his own insistence on confidentiality. Once, he turned up at Shannon airport to greet directors of his foundation flying in from the United States by holding up a notice saying: “Welcome to Anonymous Donors.”

While in Limerick, Chuck was able to spend some time with a man he had admired all his professional life. Brendan O'Regan founded duty free at Shannon airport and provided the business model from which Chuck had made his fortune. He was also an idealist who promoted peace on the island through his organization, the Irish Peace Institute. In the summer of 1988, O'Regan invited Feeney to a peace conference at Dromoland Castle. There, another chance encounter opened up new horizons for Feeney. He got talking with an Estonian delegate, Kalle Tenno, who invited him to visit his tiny Baltic republic, then still part of the Soviet Union, and see the changes starting to take place.

In September 1988, Feeney traveled to Estonia, taking with him Jim Downey, the son of his school friend, Skip Downey, who had come to Europe to help him identify and develop business opportunities. They went to the university in Tartu, the intellectual center of Estonia, becoming one of the first group of Westerners to visit the city since Estonia had been annexed by the Soviet Union after World War II. Feeney promised university
leaders there that he would help Estonia build links with the West. He also provided the university with its first fax machine.

Back in Ireland, Feeney bought a former adoption home in Blackrock, County Dublin, and created the Trade Management Institute for Estonians and other Soviet citizens to take business courses and learn English, and for Irish postgraduate students to study Russian, French, and Spanish. “We bought that place for £426,000 [about $720,000] and in six months we redesigned it and turned it into a school,” said Padraig Berry. A suspicious Soviet embassy official came by to ask what was going on and make a report. Feeney also wanted to motivate the Irish students. “I was so frustrated with the lack of business effort by young Irish people,” he said. In March 1989, the former Irish prime minister Garret FitzGerald gave the commencement address, and Feeney arranged for lectures by faculty members from Limerick University, University College Dublin, and Cornell University.