A career in the City: 7 lessons for 7 days of the week
For anyone starting out in private client advisory, it is tempting to think that a successful career follows a neat and predictable path. Trevor Egan’s message to members of the Citywealth Tomorrow Club was quite the opposite. Careers in the City are shaped by change, by visibility, by relationships and by the willingness to spot opportunity when it appears.
Mentor speaker: Trevor Egan, Partner, US/UK Tax, Buzzacott, spoke at the Citywealth Tomorrow Club on 21 April 2026 at Lazy Ballerina, Fleet Street.
Egan began his own City career in 1985 with Touche Ross, then one of the Big Eight accountancy firms. At the time, the working world looked very different. Files were on paper, typing pools were still part of office life and the telephone remained the central tool of communication. Touche Ross, founded in London in 1899, later merged with Deloitte Haskins & Sells in 1989 to form Deloitte & Touche.
His first lesson was simple. Change happens. It is inevitable, often unpredictable and rarely gentle. Over four decades, the profession has been transformed by technology, social media, flexible working and now artificial intelligence. In tax, that pace of change is not slowing. New rules, new reporting frameworks and new cross border complexities will continue to reshape the advisory landscape, whether in trusts, pensions, employment securities, anti avoidance, anti money laundering, FATCA or the evolving US regime for internationally mobile clients.
But change, he argued, is not merely something to endure. It creates opportunity. Entirely new areas of tax law and practice emerge from upheaval, and when they do, no one has a long head start. For younger professionals especially, that creates an opening. Become the person who understands the new regime first. Make it your specialism. Build authority internally and externally. In a market that rewards expertise, fresh complexity can be a career maker.
A third theme was ambition. Ambitious people tend to get on, but only when others know who they are and what they can do. In a competitive profession, technical competence alone is not always enough. Visibility matters. Egan encouraged younger professionals to build their profile inside their team and across the wider firm, to seek out mentors, use connections wisely and set clear targets for their own progress. External networks matter too, not only for personal development but for referrals, relationships and long term business generation. In many ways, he suggested, that is precisely what evenings such as the Tomorrow Club are designed to support.
Yet career progression is not built on profile alone. People want to work with people they like. Technology will continue to alter how professional services are delivered and in some areas it will reduce the need for human input. But the fundamental fact of business remains unchanged. Clients, colleagues and contacts still choose people. They choose judgment, trust, personality and reliability. The challenge, then, is to become the person others actively want to work with: the reassuring colleague, the dependable adviser, the obvious choice.
That same generosity should extend to others. Look for opportunities for people around you. Egan spoke about the importance of doing this both internally and externally. Sometimes that means stepping aside and telling a colleague that a particular opportunity might suit them better. Sometimes it means helping a contact build their own profile, develop their portfolio or make the introduction that moves them forward. Careers, he implied, are rarely advanced alone. The people who create opportunities for others often find those opportunities returned.
For all the pressure that comes with City life, he was equally clear on another point. This really is fun. The long hours, deadlines and targets are real, but so too are the rewards. Tax work is intellectually demanding, commercially relevant and often deeply satisfying. It offers both intrinsic and financial reward, but also something less often acknowledged: a strong social dimension. Careers are built not only through achievement, but through friendships, shared experiences and the collective effort of solving difficult problems together. For Egan, it remains one of the best professions anyone could choose, and one in which he feels privileged to have built a life.
His seventh and final lesson went to the heart of good advisory work. Answer the question you would have been asked. Clients, colleagues and junior staff do not always frame their real concern perfectly at the outset. The most valuable advisers do not simply respond to the literal question in front of them. They look beneath it. They work out what issue is really being raised and what solution is actually needed. That, Egan suggested, is where the real value lies, and where technical knowledge becomes trusted counsel.
For younger members of the profession, the message was both reassuring and demanding. The City will continue to change beyond recognition. New rules will arrive, new specialisms will emerge and new ways of working will replace old ones. But the essentials of a strong career remain surprisingly constant: embrace change, make yourself visible, build relationships, help others and think more deeply than the question in front of you.
Biog: Trevor Egan, Partner, US/UK Tax, Buzzacott
Trevor Egan is a Partner at Buzzacott, where he advises international high net worth individuals and families on complex US and UK cross border tax matters. His practice includes US and UK tax residence issues, UK remittance planning, international pension structuring, FATCA reporting obligations and the tax consequences of marriage, divorce and wider family wealth planning across jurisdictions. He is recognised for his expertise in the US/UK tax treaty and is enrolled to practise before the US Internal Revenue Service.
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