How did Flintheart Glomgold get so rich?

[pollux]

We know from "The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck" that Scrooge had his breakthrough 1896 at the Klondike when he was searching for gold, then he started to build a business and some years later he became a billionaire. In 1902 he settled in Duckburg and spend the next 40 years to extend his empire and fortune all over the world. 

As far as I know, Rockerduck inherited everything from his father who did get rich in mining and oil business and during various gold rushs. But where did Glomgold get his money from? Just like Scrooge he used to be poor.

I can imagine that he took over various industries from former European colonial empires when they began to collapse after World War II or that they worked with them and likely he commited many atrocities.

[muggyruglugg]

Diamond mines I assume, since he's referred to as a "mine owner" in the first story he's in, and tries to acquire diamond mines in the second and third stories he's in.

[Lieju]

Yeah in Barks he is kinda. I think he is supposed to be a mirror to Scrooge in that Scrooge got rich with gold in Klondike and Flinty with diamonds in south africa. That's presumably why he is South African in the original story to begin with. 'Diamonds' would have been the assosiation.

And then just like Scrooge he branched out. In the second-richest duck he might be first introduced as a mine owner but

The 80's and 90's Danish stories that wrote him having known Scrooge for decades had him just be around where-ever Scrooge was tho, and this story inducks.org/s.php?c=D+90106 claims he and Scrooge both got rich in Klondike...

In Don Rosa's version, I got a theory that since Glomgold was all alone he was able to travel much less (Scrooge had his sisters who could stay back home and take care of his money and financial empire) so Flinty's empire grew slower... He was only really able to catch up with Scrooge when he went to retirement. And yes, Don Rosa's Flinty certainly was a robber baron... That one moment Scrooge burnt down that village was just what Don Rosa's Flinty was doing regularly.

[RobbK1]

Barks had Glomgold having been a diamond mine owner,and having been involved in the large South African gold strikes(Witwatersrand, although started in 1886, was still going strong into the early 1900s). And, also being a very rich man during the early 1900s in South Africa, he likely help build the railroad system, was involved in the shipping business (as South Africa depends a lot on overseas trade. He probably was involved in bringing power to the cities (electrical power companies), and steel production, and the construction industry. He probably had large farming interests, as well. He probably was a mirror-image of Scrooge McDuck, in Calisota, USA, - Glomgold probably was in many businesses that helped modernise South Africa near the end of the nineteenth Century, and through the first half of The Twentieth. Like Scrooge, he probably made a lot of money on the stock market, as well (USA (NYSE), UK London, Tokyo, and all the major exchanges, worldwide.