Meet the Fuggers: Europe’s richest family ever

Greg Steinmetz (0:00)

He would be worth about 4 trillion dollars. Wow. Compared to poor Elon at only 900 billion.

Robin Wigglesworth (0:06)

God, pathetic. Elon needs to get his finger out, really.

Greg Steinmetz (0:09)

Fugger was a glorified peasant. There's a risk of him being hauled off in chains and having a hot poker shoved through his cheek on the whim of the emperor, and he's saying, listen, buddy boy, I gave you this money, you gotta pay back or else. Here's a banker who started probably the most seminal event in European history.

Robin Wigglesworth (0:31)

Today, on The Story of Money. If you want to understand how modern billionaires weaponize money, create monopolies and use politics to their advantage, well, you don't need to listen to a tech podcast. Nope, you just need to listen to us and look to the Renaissance.

Gillian Tett (0:48)

Because although everyone's heard about the Medici's and how they revolutionized banking and medieval Italy, there was actually another family operating in Europe's north at the same time in the 1500s. And they were the most influential family you've never heard of called the Fuggers.

Robin Wigglesworth (1:06)

They were a textile and mining dynasty in the 1500s, who at their peak, depending on how you measure it, were richer than the Medici's, way richer, and in fact richer even than Elon Musk or Bill Gates today. They were fabulously wealthy.

Gillian Tett (1:21)

They were also richer than the Trump family, if you can believe it. But the point is 500 years before Silicon Valley, the man at the center of the Fugger family, a man called Jacob Fugger, built a business empire that dwarfed today's tech titans. And that's whose story we're going to tell today. Because actually, this is a saga which might sound alarmingly familiar.

Robin Wigglesworth (1:44)

Yes. And to introduce us to the Fuggers, in particular, Jacob Fugger, we're joined by the former journalist and historian, Greg Steinmetz, author of The Richest Man Who Ever Lived. Hi, Greg. Thanks so much for being here today.

Greg Steinmetz (1:57)

Thank you very much for having me. I love The Financial Times. I've been reading it forever, and this is an honor as well as a privilege.

Gillian Tett (2:04)

Okay. That was not a paid advert, but thank you. And we're fascinated by what we're going to be talking about today because there's such a lively debate about billionaires right now. And we need to look back to try and frame this more accurately. So before we go any further, the Fuggers are not as well known as other rich historical dynasties like the Medici or the Rothschilds. And then Jacob was known as Jacob the Rich, Jacob Fugger, wasn't he?

Greg Steinmetz (2:30)

Yeah. And he gave himself that name. He was very proud of his wealth. That's all they cared about was making money. And he wanted to be known. And in fact, on his tombstone, he points out that he was second to none in the creation of extraordinary wealth.

And for that reason should not be numbered among the mortals.

Gillian Tett (2:51)

Elon Musk, eat your heart out.

Robin Wigglesworth (2:52)

I'm curious how wealthy was he?

Greg Steinmetz (2:55)

The way that economists and historians compare wealth through the ages is to take someone's net worth and divide it into the size of the economy at the time. If you take his wealth, divide it into the size of the European economy, it came out to 2%, which is an enormous, enormous number.

And that's even more than Rockefeller had at his peak. And if you just work the math on that, that comes out to about 400 billion. I think as of this morning, Elon is worth about 900 But here's an interesting distinction.

Fugger kept a balance sheet. That's how we know how much money he had. And what I'm giving you is what's called the book value for Fugger. That's just everything he owned minus what he owed other people. Now, if you just look at Tesla, Tesla sells for about 13 times its book value. In SpaceX, we didn't even know what the book value is, but that sells at an even higher multiple. So if we were to apply the same sort of math to Fugger's book value, he would be worth about $4 trillion compared to poor Elon at only 900 billion.

Robin Wigglesworth (4:09)

Oh my god, pathetic, Elon needs to get his finger out, really.

Gillian Tett (4:12)

I'm more curious, to be honest, about where he came from and how he got this money.

Greg Steinmetz (4:17)

He was born in the right place at the right time. Augsburg, let's say maybe it's sort of a distant suburb of Munich, takes an hour by train to get there.