Jacob Fugger’s family money may have originally come from trading textiles, many of them made in their hometown of Augsburg, but his business quickly became lending, investing, and trading a great variety of goods, surpassing men like the French banker Jacques Coeur and the famous Italian banking family the Bardis. Like them, he became a creditor to some of the most powerful if cash-poor princes of the day. He was also, however, brilliant at extracting concessions, sometimes entire properties, as collateral.

Source: The Amazing Career of a Pioneer Capitalist by Martha Howell | The New York Review of Books