Cold email → interview booked → canceled the day before. Now what?

Situation

A niche M&A advisory role popped up at a major bank in NYC, the kind of seat that does board-level work at the intersection of M&A, governance, and shareholder strategy. Specialized team, maybe 5 firms run a real practice like this. Posting was a few hours old when I caught it.

Applied immediately. Sent cold emails to 4–5 people at the firm the same day. No response. Right before the weekend, so I figured the trail was dead.

Monday morning the EA reaches out to schedule interviews. Three back-to-back with the junior team, an associate and two analysts, booked for Thursday.

Spent two days deep in prep mode. Activism frameworks, governance vocabulary, recent campaigns, regulatory updates, LinkedIn-stalked every interviewer and built tailored questions for each. I was ready.

Wednesday morning, EA emails: "Team decided to move in another direction. Meetings canceled. Best of luck."

Never sat down.

Replied with a clean, short note thanking her and asking to be kept in mind. She wrote back saying she'd forward to HR. Not nothing, but obviously not the outcome I was working toward.

Background

International student in NYC. BS + MS in Finance from a decent NYC school. 1+ year at a LMM boutique — tech and consumer retail M&A, $300M+ deal sizes. Lean teams meant I was in C-suite rooms from week one. Need sponsorship. Market is cooked. None of that is changing, so the question is how to play the hand I have.

What I'm looking for

1. Honest read on what happened. Internal candidate? Senior referral landing late? Hiring freeze? Whatever it was, I want to understand it so I can adjust.
2. Where else to look. Specialized M&A advisory practices hiring lateral analysts right now. Open to obvious names and especially the off-radar ones. Drop names if you've got them.
3. Folks with similar paths International, LMM, trying to step up into a specialized seat. how did you actually pull it off? What worked, what wasted your time? DMs open.
4. Recruiters and hiring managers, if your team is hiring or even just thinking about it, I'd love to chat.

IB only — lateral or step up. Not pivoting to buyside or anything adjacent right now.

Replying to every comment. Appreciate the time.