Sir Anthony O’Reilly, who has died at the age of 88 after making and losing one of Ireland’s biggest fortunes, was a rugby star who became one of his country’s most celebrated businessmen, philanthropists and raconteurs.

He first came to prominence in the business world as the creator of the successful Kerrygold marketing campaign for Irish dairy products in the early 1960s. But he was already a familiar figure from his dazzling performances on the rugby field. He was capped 29 times for Ireland between 1955 and 1970 and also played for the British Lions.

O’Reilly, who was better known as Tony even after being knighted in 2001 for his services to Northern Ireland, was born in 1936, the son of a senior civil servant. He had a conventional Irish middle class upbringing in Dublin, but it took an unconventional turn when, towards the end of his schooldays, he discovered that his parents were not married to each other. His mother had simply taken O’Reilly as her surname by deed poll. There being no divorce in Ireland, his father was still legally married to another woman by whom he had three children.

After this information became public in a 1990s biography, some speculated that O’Reilly’s unusual background could have driven him to achieve the success that he found in both sport and business.

Whatever the mainspring of his talents, O’Reilly deployed his unusual qualities of intelligence, determination and stamina, coupled with humour and charm, to considerable effect. He began his business career as a management consultant with clients including a maker of garden gnomes whose problems later provided him with a rich store of anecdotes for the many after-dinner speeches he was invited to give.

His first executive role was in Dublin in the early 1960s when he was put in charge of An Bord Bainne, a new government organisation for promoting Ireland’s dairy industry. O’Reilly created a viable production and marketing strategy and, aged 26, propelled Irish butter and cheese into international markets with the launch of Kerrygold.

When a board member protested that there were “no cows in Kerry”, O’Reilly replied, by his own account, that the British housewives the brand was targeting did not know that.

The acclaim for this achievement prompted the Irish government to ask him to take on the job of rescuing the state-owned Erin Foods, which was making heavy losses in the mid 1960s. He prudently refused to do so unless he could also run Erin’s profitable parent company, Irish Sugar.

Erin was to be the key to the next three decades of his business life. Looking for an international partner to improve its distribution and credibility in the UK, O’Reilly set up a joint company with Heinz. The US ketchup maker soon asked O’Reilly to become its UK managing director.

Over the next two decades, O’Reilly rose to the top of Heinz, becoming chief executive in 1979 and, in 1987, its first non-family chair. He transformed the company’s sales and profits, and became its largest individual shareholder, but its stock was falling by the time he retired in 2000 as consolidation among rivals left Heinz in the industry’s second tier.

His early success at Heinz had given O’Reilly the financial resources and contacts required to launch an investment company in Dublin in 1971. Through this he was able to pursue a parallel business career in Ireland as he shuttled between Heinz’s Pittsburgh headquarters and Castlemartin, the art-filled stately home on the River Liffey where Nelson Mandela and Bill Clinton were among his guests.

The most successful of his ventures was the newspaper group, Independent News & Media, where he bought effective control for £1mn in 1973 and which developed extensive interests in the UK, France, Portugal, South Africa, New Zealand and Australia.

O’Reilly bought Waterford Wedgwood in 1990, refinancing and restructuring the Anglo-Irish crystal and china company and hailing Waterford crystal as one of the four great Irish brands, alongside Guinness, Bailey’s Irish Cream and Kerrygold.

In 2000 he told the Financial Times of his ambition to build Waterford Wedgwood into a global luxury goods group to rival Gucci or Richemont. He poured much of his fortune into the effort, only for the indebted group to fall into receivership in 2009.

That same year he lost a fierce battle for control of INM to Denis O’Brien, the Irish telecoms tycoon, costing him the dividend income his newspapers had once provided. Pursued by creditors, he sold Castlemartin and other prized assets but by 2015 the man reputed to have been Ireland’s first billionaire was declared bankrupt.

It was a jarring fall for someone once known for his philanthropy. Most notably, O’Reilly had created the Ireland Fund which became a major conduit for channelling finance into constructive community projects on both sides of the Irish border.

O’Reilly was married twice. He had six children by his first wife, Susan. His second wife, Chryss, whom he married in 1991, was a member of the leading Greek shipping family of Goulandris. A noted horse breeder, she died last year.

On Saturday night, Simon Harris, Ireland’s taoiseach, described O’Reilly as “a giant of sport, business and media” who left “permanent legacies in all three”.  

O’Reilly himself was fond of quoting the sportsman CB Fry’s dictum: “It is incumbent upon you to be a whole man, to be an all-rounder”. It was an epithet he lived up to.

PHOENIX (AZFamily) — Arizona’s Family is learning more about the victims in the hostage, baby shot, officer-involved shooting, standoff, and fire situation in Surprise from the mother’s best friend.

Linda Ogle says her friend Allie was doing all she could to get out of a domestic violence situation, and no one ever expected it to escalate to this extreme.

In one day, Allie lost her home and all of her belongings, and she nearly lost her 6-month-old baby, Jaxson.

“Evil. I don’t have any other explanation besides he’s evil,” said Ogle.

Ogle calls it a scene out of a horror movie. Allie and Jaxson are living an unimaginable nightmare after police say 51-year-old Todd Marchetti caused a series of tragic events.

“There’s a lot of fear. She was really afraid of him,” said Ogle.

Marchetti is Jaxson’s father and Allie’s boyfriend of a year and a half. Detectives say Marchetti broke into a home in Surprise around 3 a.m. Friday and held Allie and Jaxson hostage.

Ogle says Allie recently moved in there with her parents to try to get away from Marchetti’s abuse, but he was stalking her.

“He used an ax to get through one of the windows,” said Ogle. “He brought duct tape and ropes and different forms of pliers and a couple different butcher knives.”

The plan was to torture Allie for days while her parents were away for the weekend, according to Ogle, and in the process, she says Marchetti shot the family dog. She says they all went to the vet, but Allie couldn’t escape then.

Ogle says Allie convinced him to let her talk to a construction worker after they got back to ask for help fixing the window he broke. That crew called 911, and then police say Marchetti shot his son.

“She saved both of their lives and I’ve told her that multiple times. She said ‘Oh, well I should have just taken Jaxson out of the house with me’ and I said if you would have picked that baby up and tried to walk out of that door with him he would have opened fire on both of you and neither of you would be here right now,” said Ogle.

Ogle says it’s a miracle Jaxson is alive. She says he’s had two surgeries so far, and doctors expect him to pull through.

“He heard Allie’s voice yesterday and opened his eyes. He wiggles his toes. He grabs my finger,” said Ogle. She’s been by their side in the hospital ever since this happened.

Police say after Jaxson was rescued by tactical teams and taken to the hospital, Marchetti refused to come out, and there was a standoff for hours.

Then, a fire started and destroyed the home. Ogle says Allie’s childhood home burned down, too. “He wanted to make her relive her trauma and that’s exactly what he did,” she said.

On Saturday, investigators say they found Marchetti’s remains in the rubble. They believe he died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

“There’s a huge part of her that wishes they could have had the family that she wanted to have,” said Ogle.

A GoFundMe has been set up to help them rebuild their lives and recover during this time. If you would like to donate, click/tap here.

There are resources available for domestic violence survivors. For more information, click/tap here.

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“Digital nomad” visas are increasingly being used by countries to attract remote corporate workers, according to tax experts, as governments seek to outbid each other in a global war for talent.

More countries have introduced a form of digital nomad visa — allowing a person to live in a country and work remotely — since the pandemic increased demand from employees to “work from anywhere”.

The notion of a “digital nomad” has tended to suggest footloose freelancers backpacking across countries or working on beaches from their laptops.

But self-employed digital nomads make up a relatively small slice of the total community. While their numbers have grown by more than 50 per cent since the pandemic, according to figures from MBO Partners, they were not the main group governments are trying to attract, global mobility experts told the FT.

“The ‘nomad’ visa is ironically not done for nomads,” said Gonçalo Hall, CEO of NomadX, a remote work consultancy, who advises governments on how to launch digital nomad communities.

“Most governments are seeing [nomad visas] as a way to attract remote workers with the clear intention of getting them to stay and become permanent residents in their countries.”

The total number of US digital nomads hit 17.3mn in 2023, according to MBO Partners, of which just 6.6mn were self-employed. The survey only tracks Americans, thought to be the largest group of digital nomads by nationality. Remote salaried workers are not taking jobs from locals and their consumer activity contributes to their host economy.

Countries were jumping on the “buzzword” of digital nomads, but really the visas “should be called remote worker visas”, Hall said.

Italy last month became the most recent country to introduce a digital nomad visa, joining several European countries, including Portugal, Estonia, Greece, Malta and Spain, that are trying to attract a growing global remote workforce.

Pallas Mudist at Enterprise Estonia, a government agency, said: “Estonia’s digital nomad visa is specifically designed to attract not just entrepreneurs and freelancers but also salaried remote workers.”

The visas are only open to non-Europeans, with about 600 issued since the scheme launched in August 2020. But overall the government estimates that 51,000 digital nomads visited Estonia in 2023, including Europeans who do not need a visa.

Similar programmes have also been introduced in Barbados, Brazil, Cape Verde, Costa Rica, Mauritius and the UAE among others. While there are no official figures on the number of countries that have introduced the visas, tax experts point to sources compiled by digital nomads such as nomadgirl.co, which says there are now 58 countries offering them.

Daida Hadzic, a global mobility tax expert at KPMG, said that ageing societies was one reason governments were seeking to attract remote corporate employees using digital nomad visas. If such employees settle permanently in the country, they will contribute their skills and labour over the longer term too.

“The driving force behind digital nomad visas is that these countries are in competition with each other over labour,” she said.

Giorgia Maffini, tax expert at PwC UK, said countries offering digital nomad visas tended to be “a bit less competitive” at attracting foreign workers, citing Costa Rica, Croatia and Indonesia as examples.

Steve King, researcher at US-based workforce consultancy MBO Partners, said countries with digital nomad visa programmes often preferred salaried employees.

“Many countries see digital nomads with traditional jobs as tourists on steroids who will spend money locally, but won’t take local jobs or be a burden on local social services,” he said.

Marta Aguilar, who lives in Spain, said she spent almost half the year travelling the world while working for Coverflex, a flexible compensation company based in Portugal.

The company has no offices and employees work fully remotely, with a €1,000 a year remote working budget.

“I don’t like winter. So, I haven’t had winter for two years. I just skipped it,” said Aguilar.

However, the international tax system is often difficult to navigate for remote workers as the rules were not designed for a more mobile workforce.

For companies, a key risk when employees work remotely is that the country they are in can be deemed a de facto business branch, or “permanent establishment” of the employer for tax purposes. That imposes tax reporting requirements on the business and means some of the business’s profits are potentially liable for tax in the country in which the employee is working.

Remote workers can also expose themselves to income and social security taxes on earnings generated while working abroad and potentially end up liable for tax in multiple places, also exposing the employer to liability.

Several intergovernmental bodies, including the EU, OECD and UN, are examining ways to make it easier for businesses and countries. In February, the European Economic and Social Committee recommended the taxation of remote employees take place in the country of the employer’s residence, with some tax revenue shared with the employee’s resident country.

Experts also warn that some countries risk losing tax revenues as workers relocate — particularly if they move to lower-taxed jurisdictions.

“The problem with, say, the UK is we are so dependent on labour, and our weather is not great. [The trend for more remote working] may well lead to a lot of people going to, say, Greece, and undermining our tax base,” said Grant Wardell-Johnson, global tax policy leader at KPMG International.

These risks are thought to be small, for now. Rough estimates by the IMF in 2022 found that increased remote working reallocates about $40bn of the income tax that workers pay globally. This represents roughly 1.25 per cent of the global income tax base. The potential revenue either lost or gained across countries was found to be between 0.1 and 0.2 per cent of GDP.

Small emerging market economies “with below-average tax rates and good remote work capability” typically gain the most from the trend, the research found — underlying the potential for tax winners and losers. 

Dino Jangra, a partner at Crowe, said: “In most countries, payroll wage tax is the biggest take. If you start to see a lot of people leaving your country, that becomes a problem.”

However, growth in remote working has slowed of late. According to MBO, the numbers of US digital nomads rose by just 2 per cent last year.

“I don’t think the digital nomad concept has so far quite turned out how people thought it would. There’s definitely been a wave of ‘get your bums back to the office’ happening all around the world,” said Jangra.