PrimaryBid ditches UK consumer app to ramp up international expansion

London-based retail investment platform PrimaryBid is preparing to cut its UK consumer app in order to increase spending on overseas expansion.

The London Stock Exchange Group-backed firm is set to stop taking orders directly from UK retail investors after an internal review found around 90 per cent of these orders were coming via platforms like AJ Bell and Hargreaves Lansdown.

PrimaryBid found that the costs to operate the app were not justified and that it could create a perceived conflict with its business-to-business (B2B) partners.

The firm will instead divert financial resources for expansion in France, where it already has a large presence, the US and the Middle East. It also plans to invest further in its B2B technologies.

“We regularly review the focus of our resource allocation,” a PrimaryBid spokesperson said. “The opportunity to deploy capital scaling our technology worldwide is unignorable.”

The news, first reported by The Sunday Telegraph, comes two weeks after US-based stock trading platform Public.com revealed it would shutter its UK operations just eight months after launch in order to focus on business across the pond.

PrimaryBid was launched by tech entrepreneur Anand Sambasivan in 2016 with the aim of allowing retail investors to take part in IPOs and fundraising deals.

London’s stock market has been hit by heavy investor outflows, few big-ticket IPOs and a string of companies snubbing the capital for listings overseas.

Just 23 companies listed in London last year. This figure was down from 45 in 2022, which itself was a 62 per cent drop compared with a record 119 listings in 2021.

Sambasivan told City A.M. last May that he was “tired of all of the UK and City bashing that’s going on”, calling London “an incredible place to start a business, especially a fintech business”.

In 2022, PrimaryBid raised $190m from investors including Japan’s Softbank and the London Stock Exchange Group. It has a string of partnerships with firms including Lloyds Banking Group.

PrimaryBid’s latest accounts show it lost £28.9m in the year ending March 2023, with turnover dropping 60 per cent to £1.8m.