Snapchat makes London its international HQ

Rumours of the UK’s tech demise may have been a bit exaggerated, as Snap – the company behind messaging app Snapchat – has announced that it will make London its international base of operations. 

There had been fears after the UK voted to leave the European Union that tech firms would no longer be interested in setting up shop in the country, but this seems to allay some of those concerns. 

Snap Inc said the UK’s strong creative industries made the country "a great place to build a global business".

"We believe in the UK creative industries," Claire Valoti, general manager of Snap Group in the UK, said on Tuesday. 

"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."

The company, which has 150 million daily active users, has made the conscious decision to base itself in the UK rather than in locations like Ireland and Luxembourg which have lower tax rates. Other US firms have come under a great deal of scrutiny for basing their operations in locales with tax loopholes for foreign-based companies. One such example is Apple, which was told to pay €13 billion (£11 billion) in back taxes to the Republic of Ireland by a European Commission ruling.