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
002Tell me how $10 of depreciation flows through the three statements.Credit SuisseData Modeling · Chicago · 2023BarclaysInvestment Banking · New York · 2025MizuhoInvestment Banking · New York · 2026Houlihan LokeyDebt Capital Markets · Los Angeles · 2025
Say this
Assume a 25% tax rate. Pre-tax income falls by $10, taxes fall by $2.50, so net income falls by $7.50. Cash actually goes up by $2.50, because depreciation is non-cash and the only real effect is the tax saving.
Then walk it
- Income statement: $10 of depreciation hits EBIT, so pre-tax income is down $10 and net income is down $7.50 at a 25% rate.
- Cash flow statement: start from net income at minus $7.50, add back the $10 non-cash depreciation, so cash from operations is up $2.50.
- Balance sheet: cash is up $2.50, net PP&E is down $10, so assets are down $7.50 net. Retained earnings are down $7.50. It balances.
- The whole point is the depreciation tax shield. Ten dollars of a non-cash charge bought you two-fifty of real cash.
Where candidates lose it
Saying cash goes down. It does not. Depreciation is non-cash, so the only cash effect is the tax you no longer pay. State your tax rate before you start so the interviewer can follow your arithmetic, and say the words 'tax shield'.
Expect next
- Now do the same for $10 of CapEx instead.
- What if the company had no taxable income that year?
- How does this change if the depreciation is not tax-deductible in that jurisdiction?
Reported by candidates at Credit Suisse (Data Modeling, Chicago, 2023); Barclays (Investment Banking, New York, 2025); Mizuho (Investment Banking, New York, 2026); Houlihan Lokey (Debt Capital Markets, Los Angeles, 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.