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
012Do a DuPont analysis for a hospital business.Credit SuisseInvestment Banking · Mumbai · 2020
Say this
DuPont splits return on equity into net margin, asset turnover and leverage. For a hospital the story is almost always thin margins, heavy assets and therefore low turnover, with leverage doing a lot of the work on ROE.
Then walk it
- ROE equals net margin times asset turnover times the equity multiplier. Three levers, and each one tells a different operating story.
- Net margin for a hospital is driven by payer mix and case mix. Private-pay and high-acuity surgical work carry far better margin than government-scheme volume.
- Asset turnover is structurally low, because you have bought land, a building and imaging equipment. The operating metric behind it is occupancy and average revenue per occupied bed.
- That heavy asset base is why leverage matters so much. Hospitals fund expansion with debt, so the equity multiplier is doing real work in the ROE.
- The banker's conclusion: a hospital chain improves ROE mainly by filling existing beds and shifting case mix, not by cutting costs. Incremental occupancy has almost no marginal cost.
Where candidates lose it
Reciting the DuPont formula and stopping. The question names a hospital on purpose. If you cannot say what drives each of the three terms for that specific business, you have shown formula recall and nothing else.
Expect next
- Which of the three levers would you push first?
- What metrics would you ask the CFO for?
- How would this look different for a diagnostics chain?
Reported by candidates at Credit Suisse (Investment Banking, Mumbai, 2020). Source: Wall Street Oasis.
035How would you value a telco versus a software company?Credit SuisseInvestment Banking · Sydney · 2020
Say this
The telco is a capital-intensive, low-growth cash cow, so you value it on EV/EBITDA and EV/EBITDA less CapEx, and you care about the dividend. The software company is asset-light and growth-driven, so you value it on revenue multiples adjusted for growth and retention.
Then walk it
- For the telco, EBITDA is large but so is CapEx on spectrum and network, so EV/EBITDA alone flatters it. EV/EBITDA less CapEx, or EV/EBIT, is the honest read.
- Telco value is also driven by regulation, spectrum holdings and subscriber metrics like ARPU and churn. A DCF works well because the cash flows are predictable.
- For the software company, current earnings are suppressed by growth spending, so EV/EBITDA is close to meaningless. EV/revenue against growth rate is the working metric.
- The quality tests for software are net revenue retention, gross margin and the rule of forty, growth plus margin. Those determine whether a revenue multiple is deserved.
- So both get a DCF, but the telco DCF is credible on near-term cash flows while the software DCF is almost entirely terminal value. That difference is the real answer: you trust the telco's forecast and you stress-test the software company's.
Where candidates lose it
Treating it as a list of two metric sets. The interviewer wants you to notice that the DCF is reliable for one and mostly assumption for the other. That structural insight is the answer.
Expect next
- What is the rule of forty?
- What is the formula for net revenue retention, gross retention and churn?
- Which would you rather own at today's multiples?
Reported by candidates at Credit Suisse (Investment Banking, Sydney, 2020). Source: Wall Street Oasis.
049What are the differences between listing in India and listing in the US?Credit SuisseInvestment Banking · Mumbai · 2021
Say this
Different regulators, different investor mix and different tolerance for loss-making growth. India is SEBI-governed with a large retail and domestic institutional bid; the US is SEC-governed with deeper institutional capital and more appetite for unprofitable scale stories.
Then walk it
- Regulator and process: SEBI reviews the draft offer document and the timetable is fairly prescriptive, with mandated retail and anchor allocations. The US is a disclosure regime with SEC comment letters and far more flexibility on structure.
- Investor base: Indian books lean on domestic mutual funds, insurers and a genuine retail tranche. US books are dominated by large institutions, so fewer, bigger tickets and more reliance on the anchor process.
- Valuation of unprofitable companies: the US market has historically paid for growth without earnings more readily. India's market has become much more receptive to this than a decade ago, but the scrutiny of path-to-profitability is heavier.
- Compliance load: US listing brings Sarbanes-Oxley, quarterly reporting to SEC standards, class-action litigation risk and materially higher ongoing cost. India is cheaper to maintain.
- And structural points that decide real cases: index inclusion and the domestic flow that follows it, currency of proceeds, dual-class share structures which the US permits and India generally does not, and where your customers and comparables actually are.
Where candidates lose it
Reducing it to 'US gives higher valuations'. That was more true five years ago than now, and an interviewer in Mumbai will push back. Talk about investor base, share structure and compliance cost, which are the durable differences.
Expect next
- Where would you advise an Indian software company to list?
- Why do some Indian companies choose to list overseas?
- How does dual-class structure change your answer?
Reported by candidates at Credit Suisse (Investment Banking, Mumbai, 2021). 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.