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
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.
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.