Tony O'Reilly
O'Reilly in New Zealand in 1959 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Birth name | Anthony John Francis O'Reilly | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Date of birth | 7 May 1936 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Place of birth | Dublin, Ireland | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Date of death | 18 May 2024 (aged 88) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Place of death | Dublin, Ireland | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| School | Belvedere College | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Rugby union career | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Sir Anthony John Francis O'Reilly AO (7 May 1936 – 18 May 2024) was an Irish businessman and international rugby union player. He was known for his try scoring in rugby, his involvement in the Independent News & Media Group, which he led from 1973 to 2009, and as CEO and chairman of the H.J. Heinz Company. He was the leading shareholder of Waterford Wedgwood and a founder and major supporter of The Ireland Funds. A citizen of both Ireland and the United Kingdom, he was knighted as a Knight Bachelor for his services to Northern Ireland.
As a rugby player, he represented Ireland, the British and Irish Lions and the Barbarians and is enshrined as a member of the International Rugby Board's Hall of Fame. In business, he was noted for multiple successful roles, and became a billionaire, but by 2014, was being pursued in the Irish courts for debts amounting to €22 million by AIB, following losses amounting to hundreds of millions of euros in his unsuccessful attempt to save the Waterford Wedgwood group and to stop Denis O'Brien from assuming control of Independent News & Media.
O'Reilly had six children from his first marriage, and 23 grandchildren, and was later married to Greek shipping heiress Chryss Goulandris, who died in 2023. He lived in Lyford Cay in the Bahamas until 2017, when the property was sold for less than €12 million as part of a bankruptcy arrangement. O'Reilly later lived in Château des Ducs de Normandie in Bonneville-sur-Touques in France and in County Kildare, Ireland. He died, after a short illness, at a hospital in Dublin on 18 May 2024, at the age of 88.