The term characteristically refers to a powerful entrepreneur and investor who controls, through personal enterprise ownership or a dominant shareholding position, a firm or industry whose goods or services are widely consumed.
It alludes to emperors of the Mughal Empire in Early Modern India, who possessed great power and storied riches capable of producing wonders of opulence, such as the Taj Mahal.
Some are widely known in connection with these entrepreneurial activities, others through highly-visible secondary pursuits such as philanthropy, political fundraising and campaign financing, and sports team ownership or sponsorship.
The terms mogul, tycoon, and baron were often applied to late-19th- and early-20th-century North American business magnates in extractive industries such as mining, logging and petroleum, transportation fields such as shipping and railroads, manufacturing such as automaking and steelmaking, in banking, as well as newspaper publishing.
Examples of business magnates in the western world include historical figures such as pottery entrepreneur Josiah Wedgwood, oilmen John D. Rockefeller and Fred C. Koch, automobile pioneer Henry Ford, aviation pioneer Howard Hughes, shipping and railroad veterans Aristotle Onassis, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Leland Stanford, Jay Gould and James J. Hill, steel innovator Andrew Carnegie, newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst, poultry entrepreneur Arthur Perdue, retail merchant Sam Walton, and bankers J. P. Morgan and Mayer Amschel Rothschild.