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
082Why should I buy your college, and how much would you sell it for?Wellington ManagementInvestment Research · Boston · 2024Wellington ManagementEquity Research · Boston · 2024
Say this
Pitch it as a subscription business with pricing power and a real estate portfolio attached. Revenue is tuition times enrolment plus research grants and endowment income; the assets are the campus and the brand.
Then walk it
- The investment case: extremely sticky revenue, since a student enrolled is contracted for three or four years, pricing power that has historically exceeded inflation, and a brand that is effectively impossible to replicate.
- Revenue build: enrolment times net tuition after scholarships, plus housing and dining, plus research funding, plus endowment draw. Be explicit that gross tuition overstates it badly because of discounting.
- Cost base: mostly faculty and staff, largely fixed, which means high operating leverage in both directions. A 10 percent enrolment drop is devastating; a 10 percent rise is almost pure margin.
- Valuation on two bases and take the higher. As a going concern, a DCF or an EBITDA multiple on the operating surplus. As an asset play, the campus real estate plus the endowment, which for many institutions exceeds the operating value.
- Then the risks that make the price: demographic decline in the applicant pool, regulatory dependence on public funding and visa policy for international students, and the fact that you cannot actually cut faculty quickly. And I would flag that the brand is inseparable from the non-profit status, so a buyer might destroy the asset by acquiring it.
Where candidates lose it
Treating it as a whimsical question. It is a full valuation case wearing a joke. The two highest-value moves are separating gross from net tuition, and recognising that the real estate and endowment may be worth more than the operations.
Expect next
- How would you IPO it?
- How would a college increase revenue?
- What would you do in the first year as owner?
Reported by candidates at Wellington Management (Investment Research, Boston, 2024); Wellington Management (Equity Research, Boston, 2024). Source: Wall Street Oasis.
084How would you value an insurance brokerage that operates in one country that has just had a coup and writes only one line of coverage?Perella Weinberg PartnersFinancial Institutions Group · New York · 2026
Say this
Start from the normal brokerage framework, which is a commission stream on premium, then attack it with the two facts they gave you: extreme country risk and total product concentration. The answer is a wide range with a real chance of zero.
Then walk it
- The base framework: a broker earns commission on premium and holds no underwriting risk, so it is a capital-light, high-margin, recurring revenue business that normally trades at a premium multiple on EBITDA.
- Now the coup. The currency may be unconvertible, so you may not be able to repatriate cash at all. That alone can make a profitable business worth little to a foreign buyer.
- Country risk enters the discount rate through a sovereign spread, and in a post-coup situation that could be well over 1,000 basis points. It also enters the cash flows, because premium volumes fall when economic activity stops.
- Single line of coverage means no diversification. If that line is motor and vehicle imports halt, or it is trade credit and trade stops, revenue can go to near zero. So I would model scenarios rather than a base case: functioning state, prolonged instability, and asset seizure.
- So: probability-weight the scenarios, discount at a rate that reflects the sovereign, and cross-check against what a local buyer would pay, because a domestic acquirer does not face the repatriation problem and will value it far higher than a foreign one.
- The honest conclusion is that the identity of the buyer determines the value here more than the cash flows do.
Where candidates lose it
Running a standard brokerage multiple and ignoring the two facts in the question. The coup and the single line are the question. And missing the repatriation point, which is the specific insight that makes the foreign buyer's value different from the local buyer's.
Expect next
- Who would actually buy it?
- How would you size the country risk premium?
- What if the currency is pegged but not convertible?
Reported by candidates at Perella Weinberg Partners (Financial Institutions Group, New York, 2026). Source: Wall Street Oasis.
085Given a B2B SaaS company with this EBITDA and this P/E, what would you do to improve its operations and financials?Houlihan LokeyInvestment Banking · New York · 2026
Say this
Work the SaaS levers in order of value: pricing, then retention, then sales efficiency, then cost. In software, a point of net revenue retention is worth more than a point of cost saving, because it compounds.
Then walk it
- Pricing first. Most B2B software is underpriced relative to the value it delivers. Move to value-based or usage-based pricing, introduce tiers, and raise prices on renewal for the existing base. This is near-pure margin.
- Retention second. Net revenue retention above 110 percent means the installed base grows without new sales. Reduce churn in the weakest cohort and upsell modules into the strongest. This changes the growth rate and therefore the multiple.
- Sales efficiency third. Look at customer acquisition cost payback and the magic number. If payback is over 24 months, the problem is targeting or pricing, not effort. Reallocate spend to the segments with the fastest payback.
- Cost fourth, and deliberately last. Consolidate the cloud bill, rationalise the product portfolio, offshore support engineering. Real money, but it does not change the growth story.
- Then the bolt-on question: in a fragmented software vertical, acquiring adjacent modules at a lower multiple and cross-selling them into your base is usually the single largest value-creation lever available.
- One flag on the question itself: P/E is an odd metric for a software company, since GAAP earnings are suppressed by growth spend and stock compensation. I would work off EV/ARR and EV/EBITDA instead, and I would say so.
Where candidates lose it
Jumping to cost cutting. In software, growth and retention drive the multiple, and the multiple drives the value far more than a margin point does. Also worth noticing that P/E is the wrong lens here; naming that is a real signal.
Expect next
- What is the formula for net revenue retention, gross retention and churn?
- Which of those levers moves the multiple?
- How would you verify the pipeline to forecast revenue?
Reported by candidates at Houlihan Lokey (Investment Banking, New York, 2026). Source: Wall Street Oasis.
087How would you verify the validity of a client's sales pipeline in order to forecast revenue?Harris WilliamsInvestment Banking · Richmond · 2025
Say this
Test it historically before you believe it prospectively. Take last year's pipeline, see what actually converted by stage, and apply those real conversion rates rather than management's assumed ones.
Then walk it
- Back-test first. Pull the pipeline as it stood 12 months ago and compare it to what closed. If management said 60 percent of late-stage would convert and 30 percent did, you now have the real number and the size of their optimism.
- Test the stage definitions. A verbal indication is not a late-stage opportunity. Ask what evidence is required to move a deal between stages, and whether that discipline is enforced in the CRM.
- Check the vintage of each opportunity. Deals sitting in the pipeline for three times the average sales cycle are usually dead and not yet marked dead. They inflate the total.
- Check concentration. If three opportunities are half the pipeline, the forecast is not a probability distribution, it is three binary bets. Diligence those three individually and talk to those customers if the process allows.
- Cross-check against capacity. Does the forecast require more closed deals per salesperson than the team has ever achieved? And check whether headcount to deliver it is actually in the plan.
- Then rebuild the forecast bottom-up with your own conversion rates, and present it as a range against management's case. The gap between the two is one of the most valuable things you can hand a buyer.
Where candidates lose it
Accepting the pipeline and only sanity-checking the arithmetic. The technique is historical back-testing of conversion by stage. If you do not say that, you have not answered it.
Expect next
- What if they have no historical pipeline data?
- How would that change your valuation?
- What would you do if the top three opportunities were all with one customer?
Reported by candidates at Harris Williams (Investment Banking, Richmond, 2025). Source: Wall Street Oasis.
089Given a 20x P/E, 10x EV/EBITDA, $20 of interest at a 5 percent rate, $200 of market cap and $20 of depreciation, calculate the tax rate.EvercoreMergers and Acquisitions · San Francisco · 2026
Say this
Work backwards from the multiples to build the income statement. Net income is $10, debt is $400, so enterprise value is $600 and EBITDA is $60. EBIT is $40, pre-tax income is $20, so tax is $10 on $20 — a 50 percent rate. That is above any statutory rate, so I would flag that the inputs are inconsistent rather than just hand you the number.
Then walk it
- Net income: market cap $200 at a 20 times P/E means net income of $10.
- Debt: $20 of interest at a 5 percent rate implies $400 of debt.
- Enterprise value: $200 equity plus $400 debt is $600, assuming no cash. At 10 times EV/EBITDA, EBITDA is $60.
- Then EBIT is EBITDA less depreciation, so $60 less $20 is $40. Pre-tax income is EBIT less interest, so $40 less $20 is $20. Net income is $10, so tax is $10 on $20, which is a 50 percent rate.
- I would then flag it: 50 percent is above any statutory rate, which usually means the question contains rounded or inconsistent inputs, or there is a non-operating item I am not being told about.
- The way to handle this live is to lay out the chain clearly, state the answer the arithmetic gives, and then say what would make it plausible: cash on the balance sheet would lower enterprise value and therefore EBITDA, and minority interest or a one-off charge below the line would change the bridge.
Where candidates lose it
Either freezing on the arithmetic or reporting an absurd tax rate with a straight face. The test is whether you can chain multiples backwards into an income statement, and whether you have the judgement to flag an implausible output rather than just handing it over.
Expect next
- What if there were cash on the balance sheet?
- Which assumption are you least comfortable with?
- Redo it with $100 of cash.
Reported by candidates at Evercore (Mergers and Acquisitions, San Francisco, 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.