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
081How would you value your favourite animal?Rothschild & CoGeneralist · New York · 2026
Say this
Pick an animal with an obvious cash flow so the question becomes tractable. A racehorse: value it on prize money, breeding fees and resale, less training and stabling costs, discounted over its career.
Then walk it
- Choose the animal strategically. A racehorse, a dairy cow or a breeding bull all have identifiable revenue. A panda does not, and you will spend the whole answer fighting your own example.
- For a racehorse: expected prize money, weighted by the probability of winning at each grade, plus stud fees after retirement, which for a successful stallion dwarf the racing income.
- Costs: training fees, stabling, vet, insurance, jockey and entry fees. These are substantial and largely fixed, so most horses are value-destructive.
- Finite life with a terminal value: the residual breeding or resale value at the end of the racing career.
- Then the honest framing, which is the point of the question: the expected value is the probability-weighted average of a few enormous outcomes and many zeros. It is an option, not an annuity, so the way to value it is scenario-weighted, and the market price of a yearling at auction is your best cross-check.
Where candidates lose it
Freezing on the absurdity, or picking an animal with no cash flow and then trying to force a DCF onto it. Reframe the question as 'value any finite-life risky asset', choose an example that cooperates, and name your framework before you touch any number.
Expect next
- What is your personal beta?
- How would you value a business with the same payoff shape?
- How would you cross-check your number?
Reported by candidates at Rothschild & Co (Generalist, 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.