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
024Walk me through how you would find comps and precedents for a company.EvercoreInvestment Banking · Menlo Park · 2025
Say this
Start from what the business actually does and who it competes with, then screen on size, growth, margin and geography. For precedents, screen deals in the same sub-sector over the last three to five years, then throw out the ones with special circumstances.
Then walk it
- First pass on business model, not SIC code. A software company selling to hospitals belongs with healthcare IT, not with enterprise software generally.
- Practical sources: the target's own filings name its competitors, equity research initiation reports carry a comp set, and any prior deal in the space has a fairness opinion with a comp list in it.
- Then screen for comparability on scale, growth rate, margin profile and end-market mix. A company growing 30 percent does not belong with one growing 3 percent, whatever the sector.
- For precedents, filter on date, size and deal type, and separate strategic buyers from sponsors, because they pay differently.
- Last step is the judgement call: exclude distressed sales, minority stakes and deals with unusual structures, and be ready to defend every exclusion, because the client will ask.
Where candidates lose it
Saying 'I would pull them from Capital IQ' and stopping. The screen is the easy part; the defensible judgement about who belongs in the set is the job. Name your inclusion criteria and your exclusions.
Expect next
- How many comps is the right number?
- Your best comp trades at a huge premium to the rest. What do you do?
- Build me a buyer universe for this company.
Reported by candidates at Evercore (Investment Banking, Menlo Park, 2025). Source: Wall Street Oasis.
043Walk me through a deal you have been following, and tell me how it changed the industry.BarclaysInvestment Banking · New York · 2023EvercoreInvestment Banking · Menlo Park · 2025Moelis & CompanyInvestment Banking · London · 2026William BlairInvestment Banking · Atlanta · 2026
Say this
Pick one deal, know it cold, and tell it as a story with a number in every sentence: who bought whom, for how much, at what multiple, funded how, and why it made strategic sense.
Then walk it
- Open with the facts in one breath: acquirer, target, enterprise value, the multiple paid, the premium to the undisturbed price, and the funding mix.
- Then the strategic rationale in one sentence. What did the buyer get that it could not build, and what synergies did it guide to?
- Then your own view, which is the part that matters. Was the price defensible? I would say something like: at fourteen times EBITDA against a peer set at eleven, the buyer needed the full guided synergies to justify it, so the deal is really a bet on integration.
- Then the industry effect: did it trigger consolidation, did it force a competitor response, did it change how the sector is valued?
- Pick a deal in the group you are interviewing with, and pick one where you have an actual opinion. A deal you can only describe is worse than a smaller deal you can argue about.
Where candidates lose it
Choosing the biggest headline deal and only reciting what the press release said. If you cannot say what multiple was paid and whether you think it was too much, you have not followed the deal, you have read about it.
Expect next
- Was the price too high?
- If you were the buyer, what would you have worried about in diligence?
- Who else could have bought it?
Reported by candidates at Barclays (Investment Banking, New York, 2023); Evercore (Investment Banking, Menlo Park, 2025); Moelis & Company (Investment Banking, London, 2026); William Blair (Investment Banking, Atlanta, 2026). Source: Wall Street Oasis.
044If you were the buyer, what would you consider before doing this acquisition?EvercoreInvestment Banking · Menlo Park · 2025
Say this
Four things in order: is the target worth what I am paying on a standalone basis, what synergies are genuinely achievable, can I fund it without breaking my own credit profile, and can I actually integrate it.
Then walk it
- Standalone value first. Run the DCF and comps on the target alone, ignoring any synergy, so you know what you are paying for the business as it is.
- Then synergies, split into cost and revenue, with a probability attached. Cost synergies are largely deliverable; revenue synergies are usually aspirational and I would haircut them heavily.
- Then funding and credit. What does pro forma leverage look like, does it breach covenants, does it cost the acquirer its rating? A deal that triggers a downgrade can be value-destructive even if it is accretive.
- Then integration and diligence risk: customer concentration, key-person dependency, systems compatibility, culture, and anything in the quality-of-earnings work that suggests the EBITDA is not real.
- And the deal-breaker screen: antitrust, foreign investment review, and change-of-control clauses in the target's major contracts. Those are the things that kill deals after you have paid the fees.
Where candidates lose it
Producing an unstructured list of worries. Structure is the point. Standalone value, then synergies, then financing, then integration, then closing risk. Give the frame first, then populate it.
Expect next
- Which synergies would you actually put in the model?
- How would you diligence the quality of earnings?
- What would make you walk away?
Reported by candidates at Evercore (Investment Banking, Menlo Park, 2025). Source: Wall Street Oasis.
062What makes a company distressed, and why restructuring?EvercoreRestructuring · New York · 2025Rothschild & CoRestructuring · London · 2025
Say this
Distress is when a company cannot service its obligations from its cash flow, or cannot refinance a maturity. Distinguish operational distress, where the business is broken, from financial distress, where a good business carries the wrong capital structure.
Then walk it
- The observable triggers: interest coverage falling toward one, a covenant breach, a maturity wall it cannot refinance, bonds trading at a deep discount to par, and a credit downgrade.
- Financial distress means the operations work but the balance sheet does not. The fix is a balance sheet fix: amend and extend, a debt-for-equity swap, a rights issue, a liability management exercise.
- Operational distress means the business itself is impaired, by a lost contract, structural decline or a broken cost base. No amount of refinancing solves that; you need an operational turnaround or a sale.
- The distinction drives everything about the advice, so I would establish it first in any situation.
- On why restructuring specifically: the work is analytically harder than M&A because you are valuing the enterprise and then allocating it across a capital structure, and the negotiation is multi-party and adversarial. It is also counter-cyclical, which is a genuine reason to want to be in it.
Where candidates lose it
Not separating operational from financial distress. That single distinction is the core intellectual content of restructuring, and a restructuring interviewer will hear immediately whether you have it. Also, do not answer 'why restructuring' with 'because it is counter-cyclical' alone; that reads as cynical.
Expect next
- What is the recovery on each claim?
- Do you understand what we actually do here?
- What were the recent developments in the debt space?
Reported by candidates at Evercore (Restructuring, New York, 2025); Rothschild & Co (Restructuring, London, 2025). 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.