Investment Banking interview preparation

Questions

100

Traced to a firm

100

Firms

46

Updated

September 2026

Asked at

All firmsTSTruist Securities10Rothschild & Co8Centerview Partners7CSCredit Suisse7HWHarris Williams6Houlihan Lokey6Lazard6Mizuho6Barclays5Citi5Deutsche Bank5Evercore5Moelis & Company5MSMorgan Stanley5Piper Sandler5RCRBC Capital Markets5Goldman Sachs4Nomura4TD Securities4Bank of America3GSGuggenheim Securities3J.P. Morgan3Jefferies3Moody's3Perella Weinberg Partners3WPWarburg Pincus3WBWilliam Blair3HSBC2Lincoln International2Scotiabank2TPTPG2UBS2Wells Fargo Securities2Advent International1Apollo Global Management1Bain Capital1Balyasny Asset Management1BLBlackRock1BPBNP Paribas1General Atlantic1Invesco1Morningstar1PIMCO1STSociété Générale1SSState Street1WMWellington Management1

Topic

All topicsAccounting14Valuation21M&A10Markets and deals10Capital markets3LBO8Leveraged finance3Restructuring2Credit3Debt capital markets2Capital structure2Case and estimation11Brainteasers6Fit5

Level

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Type

AnyTechnicalCaseBrainteaserFitMarket view

1. 034How would you value a pre-revenue healthcare company?ValuationHardsuperdayPiper SandlerInvestment Banking · New York · 2026Moelis & CompanyMergers and Acquisitions · Los Angeles · 2022

   Say this

   A risk-adjusted DCF built asset by asset. For each drug candidate, forecast peak sales after launch, discount back, then multiply by the cumulative probability of clinical and regulatory success for that phase.

   Then walk it

   1. Value each pipeline asset separately. A Phase III candidate and a preclinical one are completely different risks and cannot share a discount rate.
   2. For each asset: estimate the addressable patient population, penetration, price and duration of therapy to build peak sales, then shape the ramp and the patent cliff.
   3. Apply probability of technical and regulatory success. Industry benchmarks run roughly 60 to 70 percent from Phase III, around 30 percent from Phase II, and low single digits from preclinical.
   4. Discount at a high rate, often 10 to 15 percent, and net off the cash burn until launch. Then sum the assets and add the cash on the balance sheet.
   5. Cross-check against what the market pays. EV per pipeline asset by phase, precedent biotech M&A, and the last private round. And say plainly that the answer is a wide range, because a single readout can move it by a factor of three.

   Where candidates lose it

   Reaching for revenue multiples when there is no revenue, or building one DCF for the whole company. The technique is per-asset and probability-weighted. If you cannot name roughly what a Phase II success rate looks like, you have not prepared the sector.

   Expect next

   • What probability would you use for a Phase II asset?
   • How do you handle the patent cliff?
   • What would you cross-check this against?

   Reported by candidates at Piper Sandler (Investment Banking, New York, 2026); Moelis & Company (Mergers and Acquisitions, Los Angeles, 2022). Source: Wall Street Oasis.

2. 035How would you value a telco versus a software company?ValuationIntermediatetechnicalCSCredit SuisseInvestment Banking · Sydney · 2020

   Say this

   The telco is a capital-intensive, low-growth cash cow, so you value it on EV/EBITDA and EV/EBITDA less CapEx, and you care about the dividend. The software company is asset-light and growth-driven, so you value it on revenue multiples adjusted for growth and retention.

   Then walk it

   1. For the telco, EBITDA is large but so is CapEx on spectrum and network, so EV/EBITDA alone flatters it. EV/EBITDA less CapEx, or EV/EBIT, is the honest read.
   2. Telco value is also driven by regulation, spectrum holdings and subscriber metrics like ARPU and churn. A DCF works well because the cash flows are predictable.
   3. For the software company, current earnings are suppressed by growth spending, so EV/EBITDA is close to meaningless. EV/revenue against growth rate is the working metric.
   4. The quality tests for software are net revenue retention, gross margin and the rule of forty, growth plus margin. Those determine whether a revenue multiple is deserved.
   5. So both get a DCF, but the telco DCF is credible on near-term cash flows while the software DCF is almost entirely terminal value. That difference is the real answer: you trust the telco's forecast and you stress-test the software company's.

   Where candidates lose it

   Treating it as a list of two metric sets. The interviewer wants you to notice that the DCF is reliable for one and mostly assumption for the other. That structural insight is the answer.

   Expect next

   • What is the rule of forty?
   • What is the formula for net revenue retention, gross retention and churn?
   • Which would you rather own at today's multiples?

   Reported by candidates at Credit Suisse (Investment Banking, Sydney, 2020). 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.