'Why our boutique specifically, and not a bulge bracket?' What are the substantive, non-generic points a strong answer hits?
General educational practice only. This is not an actual, confidential, leaked, or firm-provided interview question. Check important technical details against primary learning materials.
The answer
I want independent advisory work specifically, and that means a firm with no balance-sheet conflicts. At a boutique, the absence of a financing agenda is why clients hire you for their most complex marquee deals, and that is exactly the deal set I want to be staffed on. It also changes the exposure I get.
Leaner teams mean I am working directly with senior bankers from day one, building judgment and client skills that take years to reach at a larger platform. The last piece has to be specific to the firm: [the group or a recent mandate that drew you here] is the sharpest version of that work, and it is something I could not honestly say to any other bank.
Anything that could be recited at a competitor is exactly what this question is built to filter out.
Also asked as
- State the three-beat architecture every technical answer should follow under superday pressure, and explain in one line why leading with the headline matters.
- An interviewer asks a question you genuinely cannot fully answer. Give the four rules for handling it, and explain why bluffing a number is worse than admitting you don't know.
- You flubbed a technical in round two. It's now round four with a new interviewer. What is the correct mindset and behavior, and why does consistency across rounds get scored at all?
- All-stock deal: the acquirer trades at 22x earnings and pays a price equal to 18x the target's earnings. Lead with whether it's accretive or dilutive, then give the one-line rule and the intuition.
- Sponsor buys at 8.5x on $200M EBITDA with 50% debt. In five years EBITDA reaches $280M, debt is paid down to $500M, exit at 8.5x. Compute MoIC and approximate IRR, then decompose the equity gain into its drivers and confirm the bridge foots.
- A company in Chapter 11 has $700M of enterprise value against $300M senior secured, $500M senior unsecured, and $200M subordinated notes. Compute each class's recovery and identify the fulcrum security.
- Same company as the prior question ($700M EV; $300M senior secured, $500M senior unsecured, $200M sub notes), but now a $150M super-priority DIP facility is added. Recompute every class's recovery and explain precisely how the DIP changes the fulcrum.
- A stable business generates $100M of unlevered free cash flow next year growing 2.5% in perpetuity. Value it at a 9% WACC, then re-value it after rates push the WACC to 10.5%, and state the percentage change. Then explain, as a causal chain an interviewer would want to hear, why this single move is the reason rising rates freeze the LBO market rather than merely repricing it.
- Capstone integration: A sponsor plans to buy a business at 12x EBITDA on $150M of EBITDA with 5.0x leverage, underwriting a 20% five-year IRR on flat multiples with debt paying down to $400M. Compute the entry equity check and the exit equity, find the resulting MoIC and approximate IRR, and state clearly whether the deal clears the 20% hurdle, then explain what would have to change (price, growth, or multiple) for it to work.
Practice this topic with rubric-grounded grading inside IB Atlas.
Start freeGet all 125 practice prompts as one PDF.
General educational prompts with study explanations for offline review. They are not firm-provided or confidential questions.
Keep going
The rest of this topic
Fit, pitching and how to prepare