Lazard writing test

Hi everyone!

I have a writing test at Lazard coming up in 2 days. I have to write a company profile in 3 hours, I will be given a laptop and Internet access.

Kindly tell me what are the key points they will be looking out for! If anyone has been through the same test, i would appreciate it if you could share your experiences with me.

Thanks!

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Best Response

While I am not sure on Lazard specifically this should be pretty straight forward (3 hours is plenty of time too). I have seen these from pretty much all major banks and EBs and they are always the same (some more extensive some less) and have done a fair share of them myself. most of the items described below should probably be quarter of a slide and text/graphs or both

1) Company Overview (brief introduction to the business, what they do, where they are, when they were founded, divisional overview if relevant etc.) 2) Key Financials (Include the income statement, focus on EBITDA, margins, Capex, EBITDA-Capex/conversion). 3) Quick valuation overview (market cap, net debt, EV and then EV/EBITDA for the years you show the financials, EV/EBITDA-Capex/EBIT depending on what industry it is) 4) Product overview (just a bunch of pictures and short descriptions on the products) - depending on what they do you may also include their key customers or clients (put a bunch of colourful logos here) - if they are international include a map with key locations and descriptions on them as well 5) Shareholder overview (if you can find the top 10 shareholders include a table with their stakes and values) 6) Management (include their pictures and a short bio of the top 5 guys) 7) If you can also include a graph of their share price over the last 24 months including the overall performance (if you can show the relevant index in there as well as a comparison)

This is what I used to include in those profiles (This is probably more on the extensive side of things and 2-3 slides but here you would rather want to do too much than too little)

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hey... thanks for the info. thats much helpful...

for me, it would be 2 hours, 1st hour is technical test on accounting and corporate finance (dont know what form it will be like, prob modelling or case study) and the 2nd hour will be translation from Eng to Chn.. argggjhhh... life...

 

Hi Reddish,

I was recently invited to complete the three tests you've mentioned as well: translation, technical, and company profile test. But now the company profile test allows for 6 hrs to complete. I never did anything like this before, can you share what are included in these tests and how to best prepare for them?

Much appreciated!

Best, Zihan

 

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