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
068Tell me about the two different types of loans in the broadly syndicated loan market.ScotiabankDebt Capital Markets · New York · 2026
Say this
Pro rata and institutional. Pro rata is the revolver and the amortising term loan A, held mostly by banks. Institutional is the term loan B, bullet maturity, sold to CLOs and credit funds.
Then walk it
- The pro rata tranche is the revolving credit facility plus term loan A. Banks take both together, because the revolver is a relationship product that generates ancillary business and is often undrawn.
- Term loan A amortises over five to seven years and prices tighter, because banks accept lower spread for the relationship.
- The institutional tranche is term loan B: minimal amortisation, usually one percent a year, bullet at maturity in seven years, floating rate over a benchmark like SOFR with a floor.
- Term loan B buyers are CLOs, loan mutual funds and credit funds. They want yield and duration, not relationship, so they price purely on credit and market conditions.
- The reason the split exists: the two buyer bases want completely different things. Banks want short duration and ancillary revenue; institutional investors want long floating-rate paper they can lever inside a CLO. Structuring a deal means giving each what it wants.
Where candidates lose it
Confusing term loan A and term loan B, or not knowing who buys each. The buyer base is the actual content of this question. If you can name CLOs as the dominant term loan B buyer, you sound like you work in the market.
Expect next
- Who buys term loan B, and why does that matter for pricing?
- What is a CLO?
- What are the different types of accounts in a CLO new issue settlement?
Reported by candidates at Scotiabank (Debt Capital Markets, New York, 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.