Prince Andrew was effectively pushed out of Pitch@Palace, the entrepreneurship initiative he founded to connect startup founders with investors, after his disastrous 2019 BBC Newsnight interview about Jeffrey Epstein. The interview intensified scrutiny of Andrew’s relationship with Epstein and triggered an exodus of corporate sponsors, including KPMG, Standard Chartered and Barclays. With the initiative’s reputation becoming inseparable from Andrew’s scandal, he stepped away from the project as part of his broader withdrawal from public royal duties.

Pitch@Palace’s offices were subsequently removed from Buckingham Palace, and plans were made for the organization to continue independently under the shortened name “Pitch,” without Andrew as its public face. The episode demonstrated how quickly his Epstein connections destroyed what had once been presented as one of his flagship achievements. Sponsors, partners and the palace itself concluded that keeping Andrew attached to the initiative posed a reputational risk, leaving him sidelined from the very project he had created and promoted as evidence of his value as a working royal.


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