Andries Pels

The firm traded in sugar, tobacco, cocoa, rice, rye, salt and hemp, but also financed salvages of stranded ships.

After the foundation of St. Peterburg, Pels had ships loaded at Kronstadt with grain, linseed, tallow, potash, and tar, as well as rhubarb.

Between December 1712 and March 1714, James Brydges, paymaster of the Forces, conducted transactions through Pels' account with a total value of more than half a million guilders.

Until 1750, the firm was the leading banking house in Europe, "shrouded in a haze of wealth, fame and arcane power",[10] but hardly seems to have grown any more in contrast to Hope & Co.

During the Amsterdam banking crisis of 1763 there was a great lack of cash; the bank was not prepared to prop up Leendert Pieter de Neufville,[12][13][14] but preferred a loan to Heinrich Carl von Schimmelmann the owner of four large cotton and sugar cane plantations in the Danish West Indies (today the American Virgin Islands in the Caribbean).

He was nephew of his namesake, the poet Andries Pels, and cousin to governor Paulus van der Veen from whom he inherited a number of plantations in Suriname.

In 1758 Giacomo Casanova was commissioned by Madame d’Urfé to sell a share package of the Swedish East India Company in Holland.