Anthony O’Reilly, the flamboyant Irish tycoon who ran Heinz, has died aged 88

Anthony JF O’Reilly, a charming, successful Irish-born former chairman of the HJ Heinz Company who also owned newspapers, luxury brands and luxury real estate in France and the Bahamas, only to lose almost everything in his eighth decade of life, died in Dublin on May 18. He was 88.

The Irish Times and other Irish newspapers reported, citing a family spokesman, that he died in hospital. A cause of death was not given.

From an early age, Mr O’Reilly, known as Tony, displayed a wealth of talent. By his teens he was an elite-level rugby player – the “red-headed pin-up boy of Irish rugby”, as The Guardian put it. His business talent was equally precocious.

At the age of 26, as marketing director of the Irish Dairy Board, he founded the Kerrygold brand to sell Irish butter to English grocery shoppers. It remains one of the country’s best-known export products worldwide.

Mr. O’Reilly was recruited by Heinz in 1969 to run its operations in the United Kingdom. He then moved to the company’s headquarters in Pittsburgh, where he rose to CEO 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 businessmen in the world.”

“He has a million stories and he tells them all well,” Heinz CEO Richard M. Cyert told Business Week in 1997. “Sitting down to lunch with him is like going to the movies for entertainment.”

Mr. O’Reilly played tennis in the White House with President George HW Bush, who reportedly considered him for Secretary of Commerce. He helped set up the Ireland Funds, whose support for peace projects in Northern Ireland undermined the Irish Republican Army’s fundraising efforts among Irish Americans. Queen Elizabeth II knighted Mr. O’Reilly in 2001 for his services to Northern Ireland.

He had a highly unusual arrangement at Heinz that allowed him to build his own business empire as well. He would fly to Dublin on the company’s Gulfstream jet after work on Friday, where he would attend meetings and sometimes a rugby match. Then he would fly back to Pittsburgh to be in his office by 8 a.m. on Monday.

Perhaps more successful than any other entrepreneur, he capitalized on Ireland’s economic boom of the 1990s and 2000s, known as the “Celtic Tiger,” to become the country’s richest man and reportedly its first billionaire.

He founded his own newspaper group, Independent News & Media, with the purchase of the Irish Independent, the country’s leading newspaper, in 1973. It grew to over 100 titles, including the London Independent and newspapers in Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, giving O’Reilly access and influence with leading politicians.

In 1990, he bought the Anglo-Irish crystal and porcelain company Waterford Wedgwood with the aim of developing it into a global luxury group modeled on Gucci and LVMH.

Mr. O’Reilly acquired the lifestyle and famous friends to match his prestigious companies. His Irish residence was Castlemartin, a 750-acre estate that hosted President Bill Clinton and Nelson Mandela.

He also owned a Georgian-style mansion in Dublin, a beach house on Lyford Cay in the Bahamas, and a chateau in Deauville, France. His art collection included a Monet valued at $24.2 million, as well as works by Picasso and Matisse.

Although O’Reilly built his fortune on his lavish compensation at Heinz, the company’s bland brands did not suit his sophisticated tastes. According to The Irish Times, he once said of Heinz’s ubiquitous ketchup: “We made it every day in 100 factories around the world, chunks, chunks, chunks.” Owning newspapers, on the other hand, offered “more than you can get out of baked beans,” he said.

But that didn’t stop him from spending Heinz’s money lavishly to add glamour to the company, flying hundreds of guests to Ireland for an annual gala ball and a thoroughbred race, the Heinz 57 Stakes.

In 1996, Forbes named him the fourth highest-paid CEO in the United States, despite the company’s disappointing financial results for several years. “Tony O’Reilly’s ego and salary are bigger than his accomplishments,” the magazine wrote.

The following year, he resigned from his position as chairman of Heinz, but remained chairman until 2000. In his early 60s, he devoted himself fully to his own businesses, which included newspapers and luxury goods, oil production and a company that converted castles into hotels.

Like many other corporate empires, O’Reilly’s was built on debt. When the global financial crisis hit like a Category 5 hurricane in 2008, O’Reilly’s ventures began to falter. He lost control of his media properties to a long-time rival, Irish tycoon Denis O’Brien.

In 2009, Waterford Wedgewood, into which Mr O’Reilly had invested large personal sums, went bankrupt and was forced to file for insolvency.

Pursued by his creditors, he sold many of his works of art and his beloved Castlemartin, which the American telecommunications billionaire John Malone bought in 2015 for 7.4 million euros, or about 10.2 million dollars.

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 Aileen O’Conner. 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 at age 15 that his parents were not married. His father had left his wife, with whom he had four children, for Tony’s mother. The couple officially married in the mid-1970s.

Tony O’Reilly’s career in elite rugby began in 1955 at the age of 19, when he went on an international tour with the Lions, a team made up of the best players in Great Britain and Ireland. He was the Lions’ youngest player and still holds the record for the most tries – the equivalent of a football touchdown – scored in test matches (matches against other national or regional teams).

On a rugby tour of Australia, O’Reilly met Susan Cameron, whom he married in 1962. They had six children, including triplets, before divorcing in 1990. His second wife, Chryss Goulandris, a Greek shipping heiress 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 spoke to friends and former teammates who gathered in his honour 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.”