The Billionaire Who Wasn't Read Online Free PDF Page B

American counselors. She was particularly struck, however, by the kindness and firmness with which the good-looking group leader treated the children. The vivacious French Algerian and the twenty-six-year-old Irish American got to talking, and a romance started up.
    In Villefranche, Feeney came into contact with people making a living from the U.S. Sixth Fleet. Groups of pretty women and salesmen waylaid the sailors and hustled for orders to supply the ship’s exchange store. He got to know a money changer named Sy Podolin who had bought up a row of old lockers and rented them to naval personnel so they could dump their uniforms and change into civvies when on shore leave. For a couple of weeks in August, Feeney made some extra money by managing the “navy locker club” for Pudlin in the evenings, opening up the lockers for sailors coming and going to the bars.
    As the summer ended, Feeney planned to head north again. He loved the student life and “had enough money squirreled away that I could have gone to a German university.” However, one night in a Villefranche bar he met an Englishman, Bob Edmonds, who was trying to start a business selling duty-free liquor to American sailors at ports around the Mediterranean. He asked Feeney to help him.
    The U.S. Navy did not allow the consumption of alcohol on board, but Edmonds had established that sailors could buy up to five bottles of spirits duty free and have them shipped as unaccompanied baggage to their home port. It could be a big market: There were fifty ships in the U.S. Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean and the crews were rotated three times a year. The savings for the military personnel were huge, and almost every seaman on board could afford to buy a five-pack for collection back in the United States. A five-pack bought duty free in Europe cost $10, including delivery, while the same five bottles in the United States would cost over $30. Edmonds had failed to convince a British military supplier, Saccone & Speed,
to work with him and had gone out on his own. He desperately needed an American to help him.
    â€œThere’s a big fleet movement, forty ships are coming in,” he told Feeney. “I can only see twenty. I’m looking for a guy that can see the other twenty.” “What do you mean?” asked Feeney. “Go and talk to them about buying booze.”
    Feeney and Edmonds started going on board ships to take orders from the crew members, mainly for Canadian Club whiskey and Seagram’s VO. They then arranged for the liquor to be shipped to U.S. ports from warehouses in Antwerp and Rotterdam. There was no need for capital, as they did not have to pay for the merchandise in advance. For a period they had the market to themselves, but competitors were quick to arrive. Edmonds went to check out new opportunities in the Caribbean while Feeney went to Edmonds’s home in Hythe in the south of England to process orders. Feeney returned to Villefranche in October and was told the U.S. Sixth Fleet was heading for Barcelona. He took the train to the Spanish port, only to discover that the ships had been delayed.
    Feeney had read in a Cornell alumni bulletin that Robert Warren Miller, another graduate of the Hotel School, had started work at the Ritz Hotel in Barcelona. With time to kill, he made his way to the Ritz on the tree-lined Gran Via de les Cortes Catalanes. Entering the lobby, he saw the familiar figure of Miller, with a shock of brown hair and cheeky grin, behind the reception desk. They hadn’t been friends at Cornell—Miller was a year ahead of Feeney—but Miller recognized the wiry blue-eyed American immediately. “Feeney,” he said. “What are you doing here?” Replied Chuck, “What are you doing here?”
    That casual exchange marked the start of one of the most profitable partnerships in international business history.
    Miller’s journey to Europe had been as haphazard as