Robinhood cancels the UK launch of investment app

A controversial trading app linked to the death of a US student has delayed its UK launch as it focuses its efforts on its domestic market.

Robinhood had originally planned launch in Britain in early 2020 and was planning to have its trading app available to users there before the end of the year.

However pressure has mounted on the company in the US after a 20-year-old student, Alex Kearns, killed himself last month. Kearns appears to have mistakenly believed that he had lost $730,000 using the app. US lawmakers have pressed Robinhood to improve its safeguards in the wake of the student's death.

The California-based company informed the 250,000 people on its UK waiting list of the decision via email, Bloomberg reported.

It said: “We’ll be closing our waitlist and taking down our UK website shortly. 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.”

Robinhood’s trading app - a popular online brokerage platform used by U.S. retail investors -- had several technical issues throughout the year. A system-wide outage in March lasted an entire trading day and its users missed out as stocks surged.

The decision sparked a rally in the share prices of companies which would have been UK rivals - Hargreaves Lansdown and AJ Bell saw their stocks rise.