Trading app Robinhood ditches UK launch

The California-based company, which kicked off a UK waiting list in November and was due to launch this year, said it would be closing the list and taking down its UK website "shortly".

In an email sent to customers, it said: "The world has changed a lot over the past several months and we’re adapting with it. On a company level, we’ve come to recognise that our efforts are currently best spent on strengthening our core business in the US and making further investments in our foundational systems.

"Since we announced our intent to launch in the UK, we’ve been fuelled by your excitement for Robinhood and humbled by your response. We’re sorry that we cannot deliver the product we promised you this year."

Robinhood, which has been valued at around $8.6bn, has seen user numbers grow to more than 13 million since its inception in 2013, with a jump in the last few months as people looked to take advantage of stock market volatility amid the coronavirus pandemic. This surge in demand has led to a number of outages since March.

Shares of investment platform Hargreaves Lansdown, which would likely have been hit by competition from Robinhood, surged on the news and by 1335 BST were trading up 9.5% at 1,740.50p.