Financial Analysis interview preparation

The three statements, working capital, ratios, forecasting, variance analysis, costing, capital budgeting, valuation and the modelling and Excel work that fills the day, plus the fit questions about why this seat. Every question is either traced to a named firm from a public candidate report, or tagged at desk level when we could not trace it — we do not invent attributions.

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Question bank

100 questions, mapped to the firms that asked them

Questions
100
Traced to a firm
42
Firms
28
Updated
September 2026
Asked at
All firmsMoody's7Bain Capital3State Street3Ares Management2BlackRock2D.E. Shaw2Morgan Stanley2Oaktree Capital Management2S&P Global2Bridgewater Associates1Citadel1Franklin Templeton1Golub Capital1Harris Williams1Houlihan Lokey1J.P. Morgan1Jane Street1Marshall Wace1Millennium Management1Morningstar1PIMCO1Sycamore Partners1Truist Securities1Two Sigma1Vanguard1Wellington Management1Wells Fargo Securities1Wolverine Trading1
Topic
All topicsThree statements9Accounting policy and standards5Working capital and cash7Ratio analysis8Forecasting and budgeting9Variance and management reporting7Unit economics and costing8Capital budgeting7Cost of capital and valuation7Markets and rates5Modelling, Excel and data8Business partnering6Brainteasers and estimation4Fit and career10
Level
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Type
AnyTechnicalCaseBrainteaserMarket viewFit
Showing 1–1 of 1 · filtered from 100Clear filters
  1. 015What is the cash conversion cycle, and what does a long one tell you?Working capital and cashCorephone / first roundCorporate FP&ATreasury

    Say this

    Inventory days plus receivable days minus payable days. It is the number of days between paying for something and being paid for it, and every one of those days has to be funded by debt or equity.

    Then walk it

    1. Inventory days is inventory divided by cost of goods sold times 365. Receivable days uses revenue, payable days uses purchases or cost of goods sold. Use the same basis consistently, because mixing revenue and COGS bases is the most common error.
    2. A worked case: 60 days inventory, 70 days receivables, 40 days payables gives a 90-day cycle. On 1,000 crore of revenue at 20 percent margin, roughly 90 days of cost is about 200 crore of cash permanently tied up.
    3. A long cycle is not automatically bad. A pharma company holding raw material because of regulatory batch testing is different from one holding it because demand fell.
    4. The useful version is the trend and the peer comparison. Ninety days against a peer group at 55 is a competitive disadvantage in funding cost, which is worth real basis points of return on capital.
    5. Negative cycles exist and they are wonderful. A quick-service restaurant or an e-commerce marketplace collects at the till and pays suppliers in 45 days, so growth funds itself.
    6. The limitation: it is built on year-end balances, which for a seasonal business are the least representative day of the year. Use averages or quarterly data where you can.

    Where candidates lose it

    Getting the sign on payables wrong, or mixing bases by using revenue for inventory days. Also, quoting the cycle without converting it into rupees of funding. The number only means something when you say what it costs to carry.

    Expect next

    • Which is worse, receivable days up 10 or payable days down 10?
    • How would you shorten the cycle without damaging sales?
    • Which Indian sectors run negative working capital?

Firm tags come from public, anonymous candidate reports on Wall Street Oasis: strong signal, not sworn testimony. Firms are named as the places a question was reported, not as partners of Fin Maverick. Answers are written for this page to show how to think out loud; they are not scripts to recite.