February 16, 2011
By Staff Reporter
By Harry Keaney
After 31-years, Tony O’Reilly, that silver-haired paragon of Celtic charm, has called it a day at the Pittsburgh, Pa.-headquartered H.J. Heinz Company.
In April 1998, he stepped down from the position of CEO at Heinz, a job he’d held for almost two decades. Next month, O’Reilly, a Dublin native, will retire from the chairman’s position and the Heinz board of directors.
Asked in 1992 how he ended up in Pittsburgh, O’Reilly told the Echo: "I think life is a sort of random walk. I don’t think anybody can say they planned what they wanted to do. My father probably gave me the fundamental point of direction. He said, "You’re a good debater, a good arguer, so go out and be a lawyer.’ So I did."
O’Reilly became a solicitor in Dublin. His profile was also elevated by his status as a star rugby player.
Subsequently, he received a letter from a friend with an offer of a position as managing director of an engineering company in Belfast.
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"Only it wasn’t in Belfast, it was in Cork," O’Reilly said. "It wasn’t engineering, it was agricultural supplies, and it wasn’t managing director but personal assistant to the chairman. Everything was wrong but the job was right."
That job led O’Reilly to a stint teaching at University College in Cork. He became familiar with the agricultural cooperative movement and eventually found himself at the head of the newly formed collection of co-ops known as An Bórd Bainne, the Milk Board. At the time he was 25.
"Three months later, I launched Kerrygold and the rest is history," he said of the hugely successful effort at branding Irish dairy products.
From milk and butter, O’Reilly took to sugar as head of the Irish Sugar Company and a subsidiary, Érin Foods. When he went looking for a partner for Érin Foods, he discovered Heinz.
"Heinz and Érin came together and formed Heinz Érin," O’Reilly said. "So we ran all the Heinz business in Ireland through the Sugar Company and they ran our business in England. And out of that I met the management of Heinz and they said, ‘Why don’t you come work here in Britain and run our biggest affiliate?’"
Two years later, he was brought to the U.S., and a year later he became president of Heinz, the first non-Heinz family member to lead the company.
Today, Heinz’s annual sales exceed $9.4 billion and its net income is $925 million.
O’Reilly, who’s in his early 60s and who has reportedly just sold his house in Pittsburgh, will now have more time to focus on his myriad of other business interests, which include Independent Newspapers, the global holdings of which rank him among the world’s leading media proprietors. He’s also chairman of Waterford Wedgwood and a major shareholder of the investment company Fitzwilton.
Worth hundreds of millions of dollars, with homes in Ireland and the Bahamas, O’Reilly, given his health, is still likely to continue hobnobbing with international celebrities and heads of state, and perhaps occasionally raising eyebrows with his top-of-the-line purchases of jewelry and art. Some time ago, he shelled out $2.6 million to buy the late Jackie Onassis’s 40-carat diamond ring for his wife, Greek shipping heiress Chryss Goulandris.