Lazard has appointed David Krap as Managing Director and Co-Head of European Consumer, Retail and Leisure, a London-based role within the firm's European financial advisory practice. The firm announced the hire on 19 October 2026.
Krap joins from J.P. Morgan, where he was Managing Director and Co-Head of Consumer and Retail for Europe, the Middle East and Africa. He arrives with more than two decades of consumer-focused mergers and acquisitions advisory experience, with a sector concentration in food and beverage, home and personal care, and selected consumer health businesses.
A career across four advisory houses
Before J.P. Morgan, Krap held senior positions at Credit Suisse, Centerview Partners and UBS. His move to J.P. Morgan came in 2022 from Credit Suisse, where he had led mergers and acquisitions coverage for the technology, media and telecommunications sector across Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and where he had arrived in 2019 from Centerview Partners. The switch back to consumer and retail coverage returned him to the sector in which he had spent the earlier part of his career.
He holds an honours degree from European Business School London and speaks German and Spanish in addition to English.
Part of a stated growth plan
Lazard framed the appointment against Lazard 2030, the strategy under which the firm has set out to expand its Managing Director ranks. The European financial advisory practice Krap joins is led by Jean-Louis Girodolle and Cyrus Kapadia, Co-Heads of European Investment Banking.
Girodolle described Krap as a highly regarded advisor with an exceptional track record. Kapadia called him a trusted counselor to many of the sector's leading businesses. Krap, for his part, said he is a firm believer in the ambitions of the Lazard 2030 strategy.
Consumer coverage as a contested franchise
Senior consumer and retail bankers have been among the more actively recruited groups in European advisory over the past two years, as sponsors and corporates alike have revisited portfolios in food, beverage and personal care. Lazard has been building in the same direction, having separately recruited Adam Taetle from Evercore for consumer and retail dealmaking.
The firm did not name a counterpart co-head for the European Consumer, Retail and Leisure coverage, and did not state a start date for Krap.
A London seat in a rebuilt European practice
The appointment lands in a London advisory market that has spent two years reshuffling senior consumer coverage, as the collapse of one bulge-bracket competitor and the retrenchment of others pushed experienced sector bankers between houses. Independent advisers have been among the beneficiaries of that movement, and the co-head structure the firm has used here is the pattern it has favoured when building sector depth rather than simply adding headcount.
For boards and sponsors active in food, beverage and personal care, the practical consequence is a wider bench of senior advisers who have followed the same assets through more than one cycle. The firm has not said whether further hires into the European consumer franchise are planned.
