Hope & Co. was a Dutch bank that existed for two and a half centuries. The bank was located in Amsterdam until 1795; originally it concentrated on Great Britain. From 1750 it played a major part in the finances of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) through Thomas Hope and his brother Adrian. During the Seven Years' War (1756–1763) the Hope brothers profited from the Netherlands' neutral position and became very wealthy. The Hopes became heavily involved in the Dutch Caribbean, and Danish West Indies. They specialised in plantation loans, in which the entire produce of the plantation was remitted to the lender, who would supervise its sale in order to secure repayment. In this way, the Hopes helped the plantation economy to become integrated into a global network of financiers and consumers. The Hope family were among the richest in Europe at the time. The family business focused on financing commercial transactions and especially on issuing money loans to monarchs and governments in Denmark, Sweden, Poland, Russia, Portugal, Spain, France and America. The bank was famous for having Catherine the Great as their client and Adrian supplied her several times with diamonds.

Thomas Hope was a successful and gifted Dutch banker in the 18th century. He is considered as the main author of a proposal to the States-General and the Admiralty to improve Holland's diminishing trade position through abolition of the export tax and lowering import tax. In 1752 he was the main investor in the VOC. As a Quaker - rejecting war and violence - and dissenter he was not allowed to official governmental jobs, but in 1756 at the beginning of the Seven Years' War he joined the Presbyterians and was appointed as manager by Anne of Hanover. In 1762 he founded Hope & Co. In 1766 he was representing the stadtholder in all the chambers of the VOC. Adam Smith dedicated the fourth edition of his Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776) to Thomas Hope.