Confidence vote in Britain as app firm Snapchat chooses London for its hub

MESSAGING APP Snapchat has chosen London as the home of its international headquarters in a vote of confidence for the UK as it prepares for Brexit.

The Los Angeles-based group, which has 150 million users a day worldwide, confirmed it will book all sales made outside the US and where it has no local entity in Britain – rather than following the lead of rivals such as Google and Apple in choosing Ireland or the Netherlands to take advantage of lower tax regimes.

Snap Inc said the UK’s strong creative industries made it “a great place to build a global business”.

Claire Valoti, general manager of Snap Group in the UK, added: “We believe in the UK creative industries.

“The UK is where our advertising clients are, where more than 10 million daily Snapchatters are, and where we’ve already begun to hire talent.”

Snap, which is planning a US stock market flotation this year with a reported valuation of up to 25 billion US dollars (£20.6bn), is set to open a new site near to its existing office in London’s Soho and hire more staff, including a small number of engineers.

It now has more than 75 staff in the UK, up from just six a year ago.

The group’s decision to base itself in London comes amid public and political anger over tax avoidance measures used by multi-national groups and US technology giants in Europe.

Fast food chain McDonald’s announced in December that it is moving its non-US tax base to Britain from Luxembourg as it battles EU regulators over its tax affairs.