Analyst 3 (Financial Institutions M&A)

There was a 1st round interview with the staffer and the head of HR, which lasted about an hour. The staffer will grill you on technical questions, so the valuations routine., whilst the HR gauges your competencies.

If successful you will get to meet 3 Directors of an hour each. Nothing extraordinary, they all would like to know your motivations and your understanding and views of the market place. Nevertheless there is one UK Director who will grill you on merger scenarios in the current European FIG market.

The 3rd round is a standard modelling test consists of a DCF model, comps sheet and a memo for the MD. You will get 1.5 hour to finish all this and you are given a PIB for this exercise.

The final rounds will be a meeting with two MDs and dependent on the availability of the Global Head of FIG, you will also need to meet him. The final meetings are not technical at all, however it is important to show your personality because in their view there is nothing worse than not having a personality.

They came back to me within a week and I happily accepted the offer.