Robinhood Markets, the US stock trading app, has hired a senior executive from Freetrade, a British fintech company, to spearhead revived plans for a UK launch.
Sky News has learnt that Jordan Sinclair, a former Barclays executive, has been appointed as Robinhood’s UK CEO.
A filing registered with the Financial Conduct Authority shows Mr Sinclair’s appointment became effective earlier this month.
He spent 13 months as managing director of Freetrade’s European operation, according to his LinkedIn profile.
The news of his arrival comes ten days after a report in The Daily Telegraph that Robinhood was dusting off plans to launch its platform in Britain.
A previous attempt to bring its business across the Atlantic was shelved in 2020 amid increased regulatory scrutiny in its home market.
Robinhood, which launched in 2013, saw an explosion in demand from locked-down customers during the pandemic, sparking a share-trading frenzy in so-called ‘meme stocks’.
Now a listed company in New York with a market valuation of about $11.5bn, Robinhood has seen its shares rise by 40% during the last year.
Nevertheless, it is capitalised at barely a third of the price it listed at in 2021.
Further details of its UK launch plans, where it would compete with Mr Sinclair’s former employer and the likes of AJ Bell and Hargreaves Lansdown, are unclear.
A Robinhood spokesman declined to comment.