Nikolay Vtorov

According to a 2006 Forbes study, which excluded the ruling House of Romanov, he held the title of Russia's wealthiest man on the eve of World War I,[citation needed] owning an estimated 60 million rubles in gold.[2] Nikolay owed his fortune to his father, Alexander Vtorov, a successful Irkutsk businessman[3] who set up a trans-Siberian retail shopping network.Upon his death in 1911, Alexander Vtorov's net worth was estimated at 13.6 million roubles; it passed to Nikolay and his lesser-known brother, who had lived in Moscow since 1897.Nikolay Vtorov used his father's fortune to take over numerous banks and manufacturing companies; his aggressive takeover policies earned him the nickname of "the Russian Morgan".[4] Upon Russia's entry into World War I, Vtorov became one of the major military contractors for the tsarist government, amassing huge state subsidies to build new manufacturing plants in central Russia; he was the de facto defence industry manager for the whole of the Moscow region.