Duty Free Shoppers
Feeney founded Duty Free Shoppers (DFS) with friend and fellow Cornellian Robert Miller ’56, after the pair began selling duty-free liquor to U.S. servicemen stationed in Asia in the 1950s. Originally operating under the name Tourists International, DFS’s services would later become available to the public and would expand to include the sale of cars, tobacco, and luxury products. DFS stores opened in international airports in Hong Kong and Honolulu in 1962. The business continued to expand, ultimately becoming the largest travel retailer in the world. In 1996, Feeney sold DFS to luxury conglomerate LVMH (Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy). The sale was complicated by Feeney’s prior secret transfer of all his DFS shares to the Atlantic Philanthropies, a foundation he had established more than a decade earlier. Miller opposed the sale, and the resulting lawsuit revealed a striking reality—Feeney, known for his business savvy, had already quietly given away most of his wealth.
Certificate of Incorporation for Duty Free Shoppers in Hong Kong, June 20, 1960.
Duty Free pamphlets, ca. 1965.
Photograph taken at DFS Honolulu, with Chuck Feeney (fourth from the right), 1972.
Chuck Feeney at the closing of the sale of DFS to LVMH on December 17, 1996.
Photo by Alan Parker.
Chuck Feeney (bottom row, left) and members of the Atlantic Foundation’s board wearing Groucho glasses, undated.
Time article on Chuck Feeney, January 1998.
Published shortly after Chuck Feeney’s philanthropic activities became public, this article’s accompanying photo features Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams (left). While the piece does not mention it, Feeney was actively working behind the scenes on the Good Friday Agreement, which would be signed just months later.