How a Lazard associate got a top banking job after two years out
Plenty of investment banking juniors end up leaving the industry to try their hand in the world of startups. Sometimes, they come home. Canadian boutique bank Canaccord Genuity is building out a private capital solutions team in London, and the MD behind it has hired an old colleague who was most recently a fintech founder.
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Canaccord's capital solutions team is led by Julian Tsoi, who joined earlier this month but spent the last six years at another boutique, Lazard. Canaccord said his team is focused on the European tech market, helping "private growth-stage companies raise equity, both via primary and secondary solutions, as well as venture debt."
Tsoi's first hire is Emma Williams, formerly an associate at Lazard who's joining in a bigger job as a vice president. She spent four years at Lazard, during which she worked in the bank's venture and growth banking team, as well as in its retail, consumer and leisure M&A team. While at Lazard, Williams also had a viral side hustle of restoring a Victorian flat in London.
Williams left Lazard in late 2023 and has since had multiple stints as a start-up founder. She first founded ecommerce platform Unearth, then built WA, a fintech designed to help businesses with fundraising efforts like the production of pitch decks. In addition to her own start-ups, she worked as a fractional (part-time) CFO for other early stage firms.
Announcing her new job via LinkedIn, Williams said her two years away from banking have had "highs and lows, and a lack of structure and direction but also complete freedom and flexibility that you don't get to experience in a traditional corporate job." Other bank alums in fintech have echoed that sentiment and said the hours as a founder can be worse than the hours of a banking analyst. Life as a VP may be a bit less hectic.
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