Sir George Colebrooke, 2nd Baronet, of Gatton in Surrey, was an English merchant banker, Member of Parliament for Arundel from 1754-1774 and chairman of the East India Company from 1767-1772. He was conspicuous by his wealth and ostentation, and the ambitious and speculative nature of his financial activities. Colebrooke was known as a stockjobber and a Nabob with close ties to Robert Clive and Alexander Fordyce. Colebrooke bankrupted himself through unwise speculations in the crisis of 1772.

The East India Company (EIC) was an English, and later British, joint-stock company founded in 1600 and dissolved in 1874. It was formed to trade in the Indian Ocean region, initially with the East Indies, and later with East Asia. The company gained control of large parts of the Indian subcontinent and colonised parts of Southeast Asia and Hong Kong. At its peak, the company was the largest corporation in the world by various measures and had its own armed forces in the form of the company's three presidency armies, totalling about 260,000 soldiers, twice the size of the British army at the time.