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
032How do you get from enterprise value to equity value without using an equation?PIMCOFinancial Institutions Group · New York · 2023Truist SecuritiesCorporate Banking · Atlanta · 2025William BlairMergers and Acquisitions · London · 2026
Say this
Enterprise value is the price of the operating business itself. To get to what shareholders own, you pay off everyone with a prior claim, then add back anything the business owns that is not part of operations.
Then walk it
- Start with the value of the operating business, which is what enterprise value measures.
- Settle the lenders first, because they stand ahead of shareholders. Subtract debt.
- Add back cash, because cash is not part of the operating business and a buyer effectively gets it for free.
- Subtract the other prior claims: preferred stock, minority interest in consolidated subsidiaries, and funded pension shortfalls, since a buyer inherits those obligations.
- Add non-operating assets like stakes in unconsolidated affiliates or surplus real estate, because the operating cash flow never captured them.
- What is left is what the equity is worth. Divide by diluted shares and you have value per share.
Where candidates lose it
Reciting 'EV minus net debt' when the interviewer explicitly asked for no equation. They want the story of who gets paid in what order. Talk in terms of claims and seniority, not symbols.
Expect next
- How do you treat underfunded pensions in that bridge?
- What is the equity ticker and how do you calculate it?
- Why do you add back cash?
Reported by candidates at PIMCO (Financial Institutions Group, New York, 2023); Truist Securities (Corporate Banking, Atlanta, 2025); William Blair (Mergers and Acquisitions, London, 2026). 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.