The company which develops the social media app, Snapchat, has announced its intention to set up its main international hub in the UK. Snap Inc. will now be known as Snap Group Limited in the country. The new entity will book revenues from all sales made to customers in the UK and sales in any country where Snapchat has no local entity or salesforce.
The first Snapchat teams that will be booked through the UK entity will include those from France, Australia, Canada and Saudi Arabia.
Claire Valoti, the general manager of Snap Group Limited in the UK, said:
“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 have already begun to hire talent.”
London was the site of the first overseas office that Snap had opened. At this office, it has 75 staff, up by 69 a year ago. With today’s news, the company is going to open a new site near its Soho office and hire even more employees, including a small number of engineers.
The move to set up in Britain is quite surprising as other major US tech companies including Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Apple, Twitter, Uber and others tend to have their international HQs in low tax countries, including: Ireland, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg. The move could be because the company is a start-up and has yet to turn a profit, and therefore will have insignificant tax liabilities, just yet.
Another interesting note, is that although the bigger tech firms are still pouring money into the UK, despite Brexit, many smaller tech firms are expressing doubts. It appear as though the latter trend is being bucked with Snap setting up its international HQ in the country.
Source: The Guardian
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