(Bloomberg) -- PrimaryBid Ltd., the UK fintech platform that helps retail investors access share sales, is planning to dismiss about a quarter of its workforce amid a slump in dealmaking and capital markets activity, according to a person familiar with the matter.

More than 40 roles are at risk of redundancy, according to the person, who isn’t authorized to speak publicly. The company, which has about 160 staffers total, is planning to make cuts across divisions including capital markets, mobile engineering, compliance, legal and operations, the person said. 

The move comes as PrimaryBid has been able to automate swaths of its business. The company is also looking to expand its business into new geographies, including the US and Middle East, and it’s also entered credit markets as well. 

“We regularly review the focus of our resource allocation,” Mike Coombes, vice president of corporate affairs at PrimaryBid, said in an emailed statement. “The opportunity to scale our technology worldwide is unignorable.”

The moves come as stock underwriting activity in the UK has slumped in the last couple of years, with equity and equity-linked issuance dropping by 78% to $13.2 billion in 2022 before rising slightly to $17.8 billion in 2023, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. That was all a far cry from the record deal volumes of $61 billion in 2021.

Backed by Softbank, PrimaryBid built a business around helping retail investors participate in large share sales by London-listed companies such as Aston Martin Lagonda Global Holdings Plc and Compass Group Plc. Its highest profile deal of this nature was the 2021 initial public offering of Deliveroo Plc, when some 70,000 people used PrimaryBid to purchase £50 million ($62.8 million) of shares in the food delivery firm. 

On Tuesday, UK real estate firm Segro Plc launched a £800 million share sale to raise funds to pursue growth opportunities. The sale will include a retail offer that will be facilitated by PrimaryBid.

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