Interview Question : Tell me about a recent deal

Hey Monkeys,

I am pretty sure this question has been asked on this forum before but I was unable to find any recent answer on this topic. As you all know the recruiting is starting and I am preparing for interviews my question is that how detailed your answer should be of the below question?

"tell me about a recent deal that interested you or you followed?"

What should you include and should I talk about the deals on which the bank worked on? Should I do my own valuation in case the interviewer question the pricing of the deal?

Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

 
Best Response

Know the two companies, how much it was, any multiples if you can get them, revenue, EBITDA, etc. There's going to be an investor pres if it's public and tons of commentary so read about why the deal was done and the strategic rationale for the deal. They're not going to ask if you think it was fairly valued because it probably wasn't but if you're on the sell side then you want the buyer to overpay some because that means you did a good job.

 

The last thing I would ever want to do with an interviewee from college is discuss a deal that they don't know about on the interview. I've never heard about someone asking a college to-be grad "tell me about a deal," considering they know you haven't worked on anything and more than likely don't know squat about deals yet.

They'll probably ask you other technical stuff. For me though, if you, the interviewee, brought up a deal out of the blue and wanted to talk about it, I would personally give you the flag. You'll go much further having a real conversation on an interview in opposition to bringing up boring crap people do every day.

 

I think you should definitely have prepared a few deals to talk about in case they ask you what has happened in the industry recently. This definitely can happen. Obviously don't bring it up yourself out of the blue if they don't ask but you can also incorporate it in answers to e.g. "why banking?". If for example you're interested in tech banking and bring up the FB/Whatsapp deal as something that sparked your interest for x, y and z reasons I would say that could be a very strong answer.

To the first question, there have been a few large pharma deals this year, and other than that I'd say it depends on which industry you're interested in/which group you're interviewing with.

 
TheSanchize:

I think you should definitely have prepared a few deals to talk about in case they ask you what has happened in the industry recently. This definitely can happen. Obviously don't bring it up yourself out of the blue if they don't ask but you can also incorporate it in answers to e.g. "why banking?". If for example you're interested in tech banking and bring up the FB/Whatsapp deal as something that sparked your interest for x, y and z reasons I would say that could be a very strong answer.

To the first question, there have been a few large pharma deals this year, and other than that I'd say it depends on which industry you're interested in/which group you're interviewing with.

I completely agree. Figure out either what group you are most interested in and find a couple deals in that industry (also going to say that it would be better if your firm was involved with the deals).

I also wouldn't say you really need to know that much about the deals. Maybe just time frame, buyer, seller, size, funding....

 

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