Jakob Fugger of the Lily also known as Jakob Fugger the Rich or sometimes Jakob II. Fugger was a major merchant, mining entrepreneur and banker of Europe between ca. 1495-1525. He was a descendant of the Fugger merchant family located in th...

Prince Bartholomeus Welser was a German banker. He was the head of the banking firm of Welser Brothers, who claimed descent from the Byzantine general Belisarius. They possessed great riches, and Bartholomeus was created a prince of the emp...

Joan Blaeu was the eldest son of Willem Janszoon Blaeu (1571-1638). It was under the control of Joan that the Blaeu printing press achieved lasting fame by moving towards the printing of maps and expanding to become the largest printing pre...

William Penn was an English real estate entrepreneur, philosopher, early Quaker and founder of the Province of Pennsylvania, the English North American colony and the future Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. He was an early advocate of democrac...

Grigory Dmitriyevich Stroganov was a Russian landowner and statesman, the most notable member of the prominent Stroganov family in the late 17th century-early 18th century, a strong supporter of the reforms and initiatives of Peter the Grea...

John Law was a Scottish economist who believed that money was only a means of exchange that did not constitute wealth in itself and that national wealth depended on trade. He was appointed Controller General of Finances of France under the...

Thomas Twining was an English merchant, and the founder of Twinings of London. The son of a fuller who moved to London when the boy was nine years old, Thomas was at first apprenticed to a weaver. He changed careers, however, and worked for...

Matthew Boulton was an English manufacturer and business partner of Scottish engineer James Watt. In the final quarter of the 18th century, the partnership installed hundreds of Boulton & Watt steam engines, which were a great advance on th...

Mayer Amschel Rothschild was the founder of the Rothschild family international banking dynasty that became one of the most successful business families in history. In 2005, he was ranked 7th on the Forbes magazine list of "The Twenty Most...

Guinness was born in Celbridge, Co Kildare, in 1725. His father was land steward to the archbishop of Cashel, Dr Arthur Price, and brewed beer for workers on the estate. When Price died in 1752, he left £100 each to the two G...

Among the young men whom Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier deeply influenced was Eleuthère Irénée du Pont (1771–1834), the founder of the DuPont Company. His father, Pierre Samuel du Pont—an economist, government official, and publicist—was among t...

General Gregor MacGregor was a Scottish soldier, adventurer and confidence trickster who attempted from 1821 to 1837 to draw British and French investors and settlers to "Poyais", a fictional Central American territory that he claimed to ru...

Sir Samuel Cunard, a Canadian-born British magnate, was a giant of Atlantic shipping. When the British government invited bids (1838) for carrying mail between England and Boston, Cunard's carefully considered plans won him the contract, an...

Thomas Cook of Melbourne, Derbyshire, England founded the travel agency that in 2007 became Thomas Cook Group. Cook's idea to offer excursions came to him while waiting for the stagecoach on the London Road at Kibworth. With the opening of...

William George Armstrong, 1st Baron Armstrong CB, FRS was an effective Tyneside industrialist who founded the Armstrong Whitworth manufacturing empire. Armstrong was responsible for developing the hydraulic accumulator. Where water press...