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
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.