Advice on Credit Suisse IB First Round Interview

Thanks for the help. I actually am not from a university finance background, but am doing the econ minor and listed an investment banking class I took on my resume. I did a small wealth management internship in my hometown but it wasnt anything crazy.

How did the interviewer act in your interview NuclearPenguins? Were they like the horror story hard ass bankers that I hear about?

Black-Scholes was mentioned in the Vault guide (it may have been outdated). It's some nasty stuff, partial differential equations are a bitch, but there is a plug and chug way to do it. I'd say don't bother with it. I started researching it when I saw it and found no other references to it. Honestly, I wouldn't even mention it because your interviewer may press you on it. Deferred tax assets/liabilities are in some of the guides. I don't believe they were in the vault guide (which if you haven't read it would be a good resource), but they were in the second edition (has to be second, first is good, but not great). It also includes a lot of information on LBOs, M&A, and restructuring in addition to the basic valuation stuff. Another great source I've had a lot of success with is the Rosenbaum book (Investment Banking: Valuation, Leveraged Buyouts, M&A). This book goes through everything from the 3 basic valuation methods (including projection modeling), LBO basics, actually building an lbo model, and M&A basics (you can find walkthroughs on how to build merger models online). Also it's good to know some of the "smaller" things they may ask you, like "why does COGS as a percent of revenue generally decrease when a company's revenue is growing?" (because COGS is made up of fixed costs and costs that scale up with each item manufactured, so if you make more items (thus having higher revenue) those fixed costs will be spread between more products).

I dunno, obviously it's not a science. There is no set list of what you do and do not need to know for your interviews. I'd imagine knowing as much as possible, being able to answer the fit/psychological questions really well, displaying passion, and just being a likable person will most likely get you advanced to the next round. By the way, that "400 questions" guide is really long. It'll take a few days minimum to get through it, so I suggest that if you are in a time crunch you start with accounting, enterprise/equity value, valuation, and DCF questions and then work from there, because knowing how to build an LBO model is great, but if you're missing basic questions like the enterprise value formula, it won't help you. Hell, you probably will only need to know the basics of an LBO for your interview, if that. I also recommend trying to build out models to practice these skills and really see how everything flows. I'd say value several companies using comparable companies and DCF (and precedent transactions if you want to/have a Bloomberg terminal), and then if you have time a few merger models and a few LBOs (I'm still working on this one). Finally, take everything I've just told you with a giant grain of salt. I am in the same boat as you. I'm also in the hunt for an internship this summer in IB (ideally at a BB).