7. Using a $50 million diamond as a paperweight, the last Nizam of Hyderabad, Osman Ali Khan reached a peak wealth of $230,000,000,000 before forfeiting 97% of his fortune after the loss of his crown in 1948.
Mir Osman Ali Khan Siddiqi, Asaf Jah VII, born Mir Osman Ali Khan Bahadur in 1886, was the last Nizam of Hyderabad and Berar, reigning from 1911 until the annexation of his state by India in 1948. Ruling over the state of Hyderabad, the largest of the pre-independence princely states of British India, despite only presiding over an area the size of the United Kingdom Osman oversaw a vastly wealthy enterprise. With Hyderabad serving as the only supplier of diamonds for the global market during the 18th century, Osman inherited vast wealth from his family, being described in 1937 as the “world’s richest man” on the cover of TIME magazine.
With a jewelry collection, including hundreds of articles, reputedly worth more than one billion dollars, Osman flaunted his wealth and excess. Offering a wedding gift to the future Queen Elizabeth, Osman presented a diamond tiara and necklace – the Nizam of Hyderabad necklace – valued today at more than ten million dollars. Invaded in 1948, a year after Indian independence, Osman was forced to flee into exile in Saudi Arabia, where he became the wealthiest individual in the Arab nation. Although abandoning the preponderance of his wealth, carrying only the equivalent of forty billion dollars, at his peak Osman was worth more than two hundred and thirty billion.