This Deutsche Bank junior has quit after five months to join a tech start-up

If you’re a senior investment banker focused on the technology sector, moving into a business development role in a hot tech company after years advising them is a right of passage.

But what if you’ve just battled to get into the graduate training programme of a bulge bracket investment bank? Would you quit five months later to join a tech start-up?

This is what Alexander Cornish, an analyst in Deutsche Bank’s TMT team has just done. Cornish has just joined online food delivery firm Deliveroo in a finance role, months after making it on to the bank’s graduate training programme.

Cornish graduated from University College London in 2016 with a first in Economics. He jumped through all the hoops and demonstrated the necessary signs of ‘commitment to investment banking’ that banks tend to look for in millennial recruits now.

He had two summer internships at Deutsche Bank – the latter converted from its TMT coverage and advisory team – was a student ambassador for RBC Capital Markets at UCL and organised two economics conferences at the university.

Cornish’s departure therefore shows that there’s no way of telling when a junior investment banking recruit will stick with the industry. And that tech companies remain an attractive option even before graduate training is complete.

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