Group actions and Helly's theorem

We describe a connection between the combinatorics of generators for certain groups and the combinatorics of Helly's 1913 theorem on convex sets. We use this connection to prove fixed point theorems for actions of these groups on nonpositively curved metric spaces. These results are encoded in a property that we introduce called “property FAr”, which reduces to Serre's property FA when r=1. The method applies to S-arithmetic groups in higher Q-rank, to simplex reflection groups (including some nonarithmetic ones), and to higher rank Chevalley groups over polynomial and other rings (for example SLn(Z[x1,…,xd]), n>2).