Robinhood Makes Moves to Launch in The UK

Robinhood, a large American financial and trading company, is getting ready to start a business in the United Kingdom (UK). They have begun hiring employees and have selected a CEO for their UK branch.

According to the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), Robinhood has appointed Jordan Sinclair, a former director at Barclays, as their CEO. Sinclair has also worked as a managing director for Freetrade Europe and at Wells Fargo.

Robinhood has been planning to enter the UK market for several years. In 2019, they decided to delay the launch to focus on their US business. Now, they have posted job openings on LinkedIn for their new UK office. These jobs include a senior risk and compliance associate, a compliance officer, and an operations lead.

Robinhood has had some problems with regulations in the US. In April, they had to pay a $10.2 million settlement for operational and technical failures. The settlement came after a two-year investigation that started in March 2020.

In addition to this, Robinhood has also had trouble with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). They received a formal request for information from the SEC in December 2022 related to crypto bankruptcies that occurred during the year.

Lastly, Robinhood is planning to let go of 7% of its employees to reduce costs. These layoffs mostly affect employees hired during the pandemic, when there was a lot of demand for crypto trading. The company had two rounds of layoffs last year, reducing its staff by 9% in April and 23% in August.