Anton Fugger

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Anton Fugger (June 10, 1493 – September 14, 1560) was a German merchant and member of the Fugger family. He was a nephew of Jacob Fugger.

Anton Fugger is widely considered to be the wealthiest person in history with a net worth of 4,724,844 Guilders in 1546, which equals a purchase value of 1.1 trillion US dollars.^[1]

Anton was the third and youngest son of George Fugger and his wife Regina Imhof and he was born in Nuremberg. In 1525 he took over the commercial empire of his uncle Jacob Fugger "the rich", who remained childless. He ran this empire along with his brother and his cousin Raymund Jerome.

In 1527 he married Anna Augsburger. They had four sons and six daughters.

In 1532 he became the head of the company. As a result, he expanded the trade of Fugger to Buenos Aires (Argentina), Mexico and the West Indies. He supported the Emperor Ferdinand I and Karl V. and was regarded as the "Prince of merchants". His greatest achievement was to set the course for the future of the Fugger Family. He prepared the next generation of the family through arranged marriages of his sons and daughters with the nobility.

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