Fugger, Jakob (1459–1525)

Born in Augsburg, Germany, the son of Jakob Fugger the Elder, Jakob Fugger the Younger was an investor, speculator and banker who built the most profitable commercial enterprise in Europe. His elder brother Ulrich had provided money and goods to members of the Habsburg dynasty, who came to rely on the House of Fugger for substantial loans in times of need. As a young man Jakob traded in valuable spices, which arrived from Asia at great cost and were readily sold at a large markup to Europe's wealthy families. He also took advantage of his family's control of mines in central Europe to monopolize the copper market. With the profits from these and other operations he began loaning money to kings, to hard-pressed members of the nobility, and to the church. Although usury was banned by law in many places and condemned by the church, authorities in need of money to finance military campaigns and grandiose construction projects managed to overlook Fugger's high rates of interest. He built a conglomeration of banks, mines, factories, and trading companies, earning enormous profits through the consolidation of his far-flung ventures. His true cash cow, however, was the banking business. In 1519, he raised nearly a million florins (more than five hundred thousand florins from his own bank) to help Charles V bribe the electors of the Holy Roman Empire and defeat his rival for the imperial title, Francis I of France. In 1514 he funded a complex of houses for the poor of Augsburg. These “Fuggerei” are still in existence and run by the Fugger family, who still collect from tenants the original Renaissance-era sum of one gulden (translated into .88 euros) a year for rent. Historians estimate that on his death Jakob Fugger was worth several million gold florins, making him by far the richest man in Europe, and one of the richest in history.