As far as acquisitions are concerned, we have Collis Potter Huntington —
Whatever is not nailed down is mine. What I can pry it loose is not nailed down.
The following two excerpts are from Wikipedia: Collis Potter Huntington
Huntington, from his base in Washington, was a lobbyist for the Central Pacific and the Southern Pacific in the 1870s and 1880s. The Big Four had built a powerful political machine, that he had a large role in running. He was generous in providing bribes to politicians and Congressmen. Revelation of his misdeeds in 1883 made him one of the most hated railroad men in the country.
Huntington defended himself:
The motives back of my actions have been honest ones and results have redounded far more to the benefit of California than they have to my own.
And
Huntington described his activities in a series of private letters to David D. Colton, a senior financial official of his railroads. After Colton's death, litigation opened his files in 1883 and Huntington's letters proved a huge embarrassment, with their detailed descriptions of lobbying, payoffs, and bribes to government officials. They showed Huntington to be an active, profane, and cynical promoter of his companies and display his eagerness to use money to bribe congressmen. The letters did not demonstrate that any cash actually changed hands with any official, but they revealed the tenor of Huntington's morals.[12]
His biographer says:
he was vindictive, sometimes untruthful, interested in comparatively few things outside of business, and disposed to resist the idea that his railroad enterprises were to any degree burdened with public obligations. There is, on the other hand, no question with respect to his indomitable energy, his shrewdness in negotiation, his independence of thought and raciness of expression, and his grasp of large business problems. He was the dominant spirit among the small group of men who built up the Southern Pacific system, and that great organization remains his monument.