Retail Trading App Robinhood Appoints Jordan Sinclair To Head UK Operations
Please note that we are not authorised to provide any investment advice. The content on this page is for information purposes only.
Robinhood, a retail stock trading platform, has announced the appointment of Jordan Sinclair as the leader of the company’s UK operations. Sinclair previously served as an executive at UK stock trading platform, Freetrade.
Robinhood appoints Jordan Sinclair as CEO amid UK launch
The appointment to Sinclair to this top position has been approved by the UK financial market regulator, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). According to Bloomberg, Sinclair has been approved to take over as the chief executive of Robinhood UK.
Prior to him joining Robinhood, Sinclair served as the managing director of Europe at the Freetrade stock trading platform. He has also served as the director of group strategy at Barclays and has been a corporate banker at Wells Fargo.
His appointment comes at a time when Robinhood is looking to expand its brokerage service to retail investors based in the UK last year. The retail trading app had initially planned to move to the UK in 2020, but it later abandoned these plans because of operational issues attributed to an increase in day trading activities in its main US market.
In 2022, Robinhood made another attempt at entering the UK after agreeing to purchase a London-based digital asset company known as Ziglu. However, earlier this year, Robinhood announced that this deal had been terminated. The termination was attributed to the poor performance across the crypto market, given that it had been originally negotiated when Bitcoin was trading at $41,000.
The appointment of Sinclair shows that the company is finally going ahead with its UK expansion. In mid-July, reports said that the Robinhood retail trading platform had started hiring key executives for its UK operations. The trading platform is expected to commence operations in the UK in the coming months.
Tough crypto regulatory framework in the US
The planned expansion of Robinhood into the UK comes at a time when the platform has been dealing with a challenging crypto regulatory framework in the UK. In June, the trading app said that it would be delisted several cryptocurrencies from the platform because of the shifting regulatory framework. The delisted assets include Cardano, Polygon, and Solana.
The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has filed lawsuits against several crypto trading platforms that operate in the country. Some of the exchanges that are currently facing lawsuits include Binance and Coinbase, with the SEC accusing them of offering unregistered securities.
The increased scrutiny over the crypto market by the SEC and other global regulators follows the collapse of the FTX exchange. FTX was one of the largest exchanges globally, and its collapse caused massive customer losses. The SEC has also ranked some of the largest cryptocurrencies, Solana, Polygon, and Cardano, as securities.
Robinhood has not been spared from scrutiny by the SEC. In February this year, Robinhood received an investigative subpoena from the regulator scrutinizing the company about the crypto assets that it had listed on the platform, which eventually resulted in delistings. The SEC is also investigating the custody and platform operations at the exchange.
