Billionaire Charles Feeney as a young man
ATLANTICPHILANTHROPIES.ORG
The Irish-American billionaire's Atlantic Charities announced on its website that its philanthropic founder had passed away in San Francisco (California, USA).
Few people know that most of Mr. Feeney's fortune comes from co-founding Duty Free Shoppers (DFS), a chain of duty-free shops at airports, in 1960 with a classmate from his time as a student at Cornell University (New York State).
In 1996, Mr. Feeney sold his DFS shares to the French LVMH Group, which now owns the majority of the famous chain. DFS has more than 850 stores across 5 continents.
Billionaire Feeney is also the founder of the "Giving While Living" movement, which he believes can make a big difference by donating assets while alive, rather than waiting until death to set up a charity.
Mr. Feeney established Atlantic Philanthropies in 1982, and it took just two years to transfer all of his business assets to the organization. In 2020, the organization closed after announcing that it had successfully donated all of its assets to charity.
Mr. Feeney has a predestined relationship with Vietnam.
In total, Atlantic Philanthropies has given away $8 billion across five continents, most of it anonymously. The donations go to support education , health care, and more.
In the case of Vietnam, the organization from 1998 to 2006 donated a total of $220 million USD to Vietnam for charitable activities such as education, health , and library projects.
In the book "Letter to the Rich Vietnamese" by author Nguyen Xuan Xanh, Mr. Feeney once confided: "Vietnam to him is like a lamp, and he is like a termite. Termites keep flying into the lamp. He operates very quietly, only aiming for efficiency."
For the last three decades of his life, Mr. Feeney lived extremely frugally: he did not own a house or a car, but rented. And he died after seeing his contributions benefit communities in need.
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