6. Jakob Fugger, commonly known as “the Rich” due to his tremendous wealth, became the silent financial backer of several European monarchs, investing his profits wisely to accumulate a fortune nearing $300 billion in equivalent value.
Jakob Fugger (b. 1459) was a German banker and investor who exploded to prominence during the late 15th century. The son of Jakob Fugger the Elder, Jakob II was the tenth child of his successful merchant father, who had established himself in the Italian textiles trade. Building off of the foundational work of his elder brothers, Ulrich and Georg, who founded manufactories in Venice and Nuremberg, by the age of fourteen Jakob was intimately involved in the family business. Expanding their operations to include banking, providing credit to the Imperial House of Habsburg as well as the Papal Curia, Jakob reinvested proceeds into mining ventures in Bohemia and Hungary.
Becoming the de facto head of the Fugger business by 1487, the family soon established a European monopoly over copper. Financing the rise of Maximilian I to the Holy Roman Throne, as well as supporting Charles V, Jakob hovered behind the scenes of European political machinations for decades. Profiting the whole time, by 1511 his personal wealth exceeded two percent of Europe’s GDP. Upon his death in 1525, Jakob bequeathed more than two million guilders – a Dutch gold coin – to his nephew, with his estate valued at approximately $280,000,000,000 in today’s terms.