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.
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.