Named by City AM as one of the "10 loveliest ladies in finance" and allegedly by her colleagues at finnCap as the "killer queen", Sam Smith says she's progressed through the ranks by being "totally and utterly" herself. The only female chief executive of a London-based stockbroker, Smith has not hit a glass ceiling. "I think it's a lot about your life choice when you're a woman and that's probably why a lot of people don't get to a certain point in the financial services industry," she says. "If you're confident, if you believe that you can do it, it doesn't matter that you're a woman."

Smith joined private-client broker JM Finn from KPMG to create its corporate finance team. She led the buy-out of its small-cap corporate finance advisory and institutional broking businesses in August 2007 to create finnCap.

"We knew there was a niche market for it, but we weren't going to put all our hours into something for someone else to get the benefit," she says. "The subsidiary created value for JM Finn but also created enough shares so that the staff had 50 per cent ownership."

Within seven months, the spin-out was complete. Smith remembers it as a "hideous" time, mainly because she managed the whole process herself—from the business plan through to a shareholders' agreement, compliance and branding. "My day job as head of corporate finance was from seven to seven," she recalls. "It wasn't like I just had that [the separation] for a project. I didn't sleep; I didn't have a holiday; I split up with my boyfriend. I was on my last legs."

But it was worth it, she continues, because finnCap is already ranked as a top 10 Nomad (nominated adviser) and broker, acts for 63 corporate clients, has expanded its team to 41 and announced strong results for the six months to 31 October, 2009, raising £80m for small firms.

"Everyone's attitude changed," says Smith. "We were all shareholders, all owning and running our own business. We've changed the reputation of the firm since the separation. We're in a stronger position, with good momentum."

Surviving last year has provided a tremendous morale boost for the stockbroker, says Smith. Despite the recession, finnCap was "doing OK up to December 2008, raising bits of money. Then in January 2009, the market shut. No one wanted to invest in small caps, a lot of clients went bust, the banks weren't supporting them and we had to make redundancies."

The business survived, she says, on its day-to-day income, and then in April it raised money for a small-cap company, which made it profitable for the year. "That saw the turn of the market," reckons Smith. "There's more risk appetite. In terms of outlook, it's looking pretty positive for the small caps compared with 2008."

It was a good year for Smith personally, too. She won the national Business Woman of the Future Award 2009. But she prefers to talk about the success of the business generally.

"My proudest achievement is largely about finnCap rather than anything else I've done. It's still going to be tough, but I think we're out of the woods now. That means we're profitable as well as our clients."