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
045Based on the financials in front of you, would you advise this company to sell or not?Harris WilliamsInvestment Banking · Richmond · 2024Lincoln InternationalMergers and Acquisitions · New York · 2025
Say this
I would answer the question directly with a recommendation, then defend it on three axes: where the business is in its own trajectory, where the market is in its cycle, and what the owner actually wants.
Then walk it
- Sell into strength. If margins have just peaked, growth is decelerating, and the sector is trading at a cyclical high multiple, that is the moment. Buyers pay for the next three years, not the last three.
- Hold if there is a visible, fundable value-creation step the current owner can capture: a margin programme half done, a new facility about to come online, a contract about to be signed. Let the buyer pay for the result, not the plan.
- Then the owner's own position. A founder with all their net worth in one asset has a diversification reason to sell that has nothing to do with the multiple. A partial sale can solve that.
- Test the buyer universe before recommending a process. A thin buyer list means a weak auction and a weak price, whatever the financials say.
- Then commit. Something like: given decelerating growth, peak margins and a deep strategic buyer list, I would run a process now and target the strategics.
Where candidates lose it
Hedging. Middle-market bankers ask this to see whether you can make a recommendation on incomplete information. Saying 'it depends' and stopping is a fail. Pick a side, then name what would change your mind.
Expect next
- Who would be a dark horse buyer?
- Build me the buyer universe.
- What would change your recommendation?
Reported by candidates at Harris Williams (Investment Banking, Richmond, 2024); Lincoln International (Mergers and Acquisitions, New York, 2025). Source: Wall Street Oasis.
046Who would be a dark horse candidate to buy a pen manufacturer?Harris WilliamsMergers and Acquisitions · Richmond · 2025
Say this
I would look for buyers who want the capability rather than the product. An injection-moulding or precision-plastics group buying for the manufacturing asset, or a promotional-products and corporate-gifting business buying for the channel.
Then walk it
- The obvious buyers are other stationery brands and their sponsors. Those are not dark horses, so I would name them and move past them.
- The manufacturing angle: a pen is a high-volume precision plastics and micro-assembly business. A contract manufacturer in medical devices or cosmetics packaging could want that capacity and tolerance capability.
- The channel angle: whoever owns the shelf. A promotional products distributor, or a corporate gifting platform, buys the brand as a hook for a much larger merchandising catalogue.
- The brand angle: luxury. If the target has any premium line, a luxury goods group could take the brand and abandon the volume business entirely. That is a different valuation basis, brand not EBITDA.
- And the adjacency angle: an office-products distributor integrating backwards, or an Asian manufacturer buying Western distribution and brand. Each of these values a different asset inside the same company, which is the whole point of building a buyer universe properly.
Where candidates lose it
Naming only competitors. The word 'dark horse' means they want to see whether you can decompose the company into its separate assets, manufacturing, brand, channel, and find who values each one most. Structure the answer by asset, not by company.
Expect next
- Which of those pays the most?
- How would you approach them differently in a process?
- How would you value it for a luxury buyer versus a manufacturer?
Reported by candidates at Harris Williams (Mergers and Acquisitions, Richmond, 2025). Source: Wall Street Oasis.
087How would you verify the validity of a client's sales pipeline in order to forecast revenue?Harris WilliamsInvestment Banking · Richmond · 2025
Say this
Test it historically before you believe it prospectively. Take last year's pipeline, see what actually converted by stage, and apply those real conversion rates rather than management's assumed ones.
Then walk it
- Back-test first. Pull the pipeline as it stood 12 months ago and compare it to what closed. If management said 60 percent of late-stage would convert and 30 percent did, you now have the real number and the size of their optimism.
- Test the stage definitions. A verbal indication is not a late-stage opportunity. Ask what evidence is required to move a deal between stages, and whether that discipline is enforced in the CRM.
- Check the vintage of each opportunity. Deals sitting in the pipeline for three times the average sales cycle are usually dead and not yet marked dead. They inflate the total.
- Check concentration. If three opportunities are half the pipeline, the forecast is not a probability distribution, it is three binary bets. Diligence those three individually and talk to those customers if the process allows.
- Cross-check against capacity. Does the forecast require more closed deals per salesperson than the team has ever achieved? And check whether headcount to deliver it is actually in the plan.
- Then rebuild the forecast bottom-up with your own conversion rates, and present it as a range against management's case. The gap between the two is one of the most valuable things you can hand a buyer.
Where candidates lose it
Accepting the pipeline and only sanity-checking the arithmetic. The technique is historical back-testing of conversion by stage. If you do not say that, you have not answered it.
Expect next
- What if they have no historical pipeline data?
- How would that change your valuation?
- What would you do if the top three opportunities were all with one customer?
Reported by candidates at Harris Williams (Investment Banking, Richmond, 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.