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.
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.