Chuck Feeney: The Billionaire Who Gave It All Away

Imagine a billionaire built on duty-free luxury goods who wore a 10 dollar plastic watch, flew economy, owned neither a car nor a house, and carried documents in a plastic grocery bag. That was Chuck Feeney, the man who pioneered the global duty-free industry and then secretly gave away an 8 billion dollar fortune.This episode follows Feeney from a Depression-era, working-class childhood in New Jersey through the founding of Duty Free Shoppers and the tax arbitrage that made him rich, to his covert transfer of his stake into Atlantic Philanthropies and his lifelong commitment to giving while living.Selling tax-free liquor to US servicemen abroad through a mail-order catalogThe exclusive Hawaii airport concession that captured the Japanese tourist boomSecretly moving his ownership into a Bermuda-based charitable structure in 1984How enforced anonymity let charities double their fundraising by selling naming rightsClosing his foundation in 2020 after giving away nearly every cent