Investment Banking interview preparation
Every question below is either traced to a named firm from a public candidate report, or tagged at desk level when we could not trace it. Answers are written the way you would actually say them out loud — answer first, then the mechanism, then the limitation.
100 questions, mapped to the firms that asked them
- Questions
- 100
- Traced to a firm
- 100
- Firms
- 46
- Updated
- September 2026
079How would you value your school's most popular food truck, and what assumptions would you make?CitiInvestment Banking · New York · 2026
Say this
Build up the revenue from observable inputs, estimate margin, then apply a multiple appropriate to a tiny owner-operated business. Say every assumption out loud and keep the numbers round.
Then walk it
- Revenue: it serves maybe 150 customers a day at an average ticket of $12, so about $1,800 a day. Open 300 days a year, so roughly $540,000 of annual revenue.
- Costs: food cost around 30 percent, one or two staff plus the owner at maybe $80,000 total, then permits, fuel, maintenance and the truck payment. Call it $120,000 of operating profit before the owner's own wage.
- Normalise for owner compensation, which is the step people skip. If the owner is working full time, you must charge a market salary, say $50,000, leaving about $70,000 of real EBITDA.
- Multiple: this is a tiny business with total key-person dependency, no contracts, and a licence that may not transfer. Two to three times EBITDA, so $140,000 to $210,000.
- Then the cross-checks: the replacement cost of a used truck and equipment is maybe $60,000 to $100,000, which sets a floor. And the location permit may be the single most valuable asset, in which case you are really valuing the licence, not the business.
Where candidates lose it
Applying a public-market multiple to a food truck. Small, owner-dependent businesses trade at two to four times EBITDA, not ten. And forgetting to charge for the owner's labour, which overstates EBITDA enormously in any small business case.
Expect next
- What if the permit is not transferable?
- How would you value an apple tree?
- What would make you pay more than replacement cost?
Reported by candidates at Citi (Investment Banking, New York, 2026). Source: Wall Street Oasis.
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.