The Infamous 400 Questions Guide

Depends on what bank. Its helpful to also use each of the BIWS guides (not the 400Q -  the individual guides) and videos they have on each section (Accounting, DCF/valuation, EV and EQV, M&A, and LBO).

https://breakingintowallstreet.com/biws/investment-banking-interview-gu…

Read Investment Banking by R&P it will help you actually understand the topics and then look at the guide. This will help you remember the answers and be able to answer different variations of the standard questions that are essentially the same but require a little critical thinking. I think it’s pretty obvious who has memorized the guide and who actually has a decent enough understanding of the fundamentals to think through a unique question. Good Luck!

Purchase WSP’s Red Book. Helped me a lot

Have used 400q guide last year. Was more than enough to get me through final rounds at BB/EBs.

The latest BIWS guides seem to get into a little too much detail or obsess over minor topics that's hardly ever used or asked in entry level positions/interviews. (topics such as how to treat Op. lease and how metrics are all broken because of that, relative value contribution in Merger Model, etc.)

IB Vine - includes 400Qs plus off-guide questions. Also includes questions for PE, FIG, RX

If you're a finance major and are taking finance valuation classes (basic LBO, DCF, etc) and at least 2 semesters of accounting by the time recruiting hits, you might be okay with the 400 + just googling technicals + any other free guides you can find online.

R&P is great for an econ major but I think anyone who has already had a lot of hours spent learning finance is better off using that time for networking or perfecting behaviorals

Anyone have any good references for more advanced questions?

For example - in an interview (full-time position when I was in college) I got asked something like this:

“What shortcut method can you use to identify the optimal cost of debt where an acquisition yields exactly 0 EPS accretion?”

There had been a couple of questions before testing whether I understood high level merger math (calculating approx. EPS based on an all-stock deal, knowing when you can use the P/E rule etc.)

I then got asked the above. I clarified whether it was all-stock or there was cash involved, to which they said it would not matter regardless of the funding split.

Can’t remember my exact thought process leading up to the answer, but I said something along the lines of:

“If this were all-stock, you would ensure the P/E of the bidder were to match the P/E of the target to result in no accretion / dilution. Also note that the inverse of the P/E (i.e. the reciprocal; the earnings yield) is a measure for the cost of equity. To ensure nil accretion, you would set the cost of debt to this level of cost of equity.”

I may have explained slightly incorrectly, but according to the interviewers that was the correct answer. Anyone know techs of that level which require a bit more thinking from the original guide questions?