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
064What credit metrics would you look at when analysing a company like Nike?Truist SecuritiesLeveraged Finance · Atlanta · 2024
Say this
Leverage and coverage first: net debt to EBITDA and EBITDA to interest. Then cash conversion, free cash flow to debt, and the maturity profile. For a consumer brand I would add inventory days, because that is where the trouble shows up first.
Then walk it
- Leverage: net debt to EBITDA, and gross leverage too, since cash can be trapped offshore or needed for operations. For an investment grade consumer name you would expect well under two times.
- Coverage: EBITDA or EBIT to interest expense, and the tighter test, free cash flow after CapEx and dividends against interest.
- Cash conversion: free cash flow to total debt, and EBITDA to free cash flow, which tells you how much of the reported profit is real.
- Liquidity and maturities: cash on hand plus undrawn revolver against the next two years of maturities. A profitable company still defaults if it cannot refinance.
- For Nike specifically: inventory days and the gap between revenue growth and inventory growth. When inventory grows faster than sales in a branded consumer business, discounting and a gross margin hit are coming. I would also look at wholesale versus direct mix and geographic concentration.
Where candidates lose it
Reciting generic credit ratios and ignoring that they named a specific company. The sector-specific metric, inventory in this case, is what shows you can actually underwrite rather than recite. Always bring one metric that fits the named business.
Expect next
- What line items would you look at to assess creditworthiness?
- How would you assess a good borrower?
- How would you qualitatively assess an entity for a rating?
Reported by candidates at Truist Securities (Leveraged Finance, Atlanta, 2024). 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.