Billionaire Charles Feeney when he was young.
ATLANTICPHILANTHROPIES.ORG
The Atlantic Philanthropy, founded by the Irish-American billionaire, announced on its website that its philanthropic founder had passed away in San Francisco, California.
Few people know that the majority of Feeney's fortune came from co-founding Duty Free Shoppers (DFS), a chain of duty-free shops at airports, in 1960 with a classmate from his time at Cornell University (New York).
In 1996, Mr. Feeney sold his stake in DFS to the French conglomerate LVMH, which now owns a majority stake in the popular department store chain. DFS has over 850 stores across five continents.
Billionaire Feeney is also the initiator of the "Give While You Live" movement. He believes that donating wealth while alive can make a significant difference, rather than waiting until after death to establish a charitable foundation.
Feeney established the Atlantic Charity in 1982, and it took him only two years to transfer all of his business assets to the organization. In 2020, the organization closed after declaring that it had successfully donated all its assets to charity.
Mr. Feeney has a special connection with Vietnam.
In total, Atlantic Philanthropy has donated $8 billion across five continents, mostly anonymously. These donations support education , healthcare, and more.
In the case of Vietnam, from 1998 to 2006, the organization donated a total of $220 million USD to Vietnam for charitable activities such as education, healthcare , and library projects.
In the book "Letters to Wealthy Vietnamese" by author Nguyen Xuan Xanh, Mr. Feeney once confided: "Vietnam is like a lamp to him, and he is like an ant. The ant keeps flying into the lamp. He operates very quietly, aiming only for efficiency."
For the last three decades of his life, Mr. Feeney lived very frugally: he owned neither a house nor a car, and only rented. And he passed away after seeing his contributions benefiting communities in need.
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