Corporate Finance
30 capital allocation questions of the kind asked in corporate finance interviews. Each carries a model answer, the concepts a complete response must hit, and graded feedback on your own attempt.
Tests whether a candidate understands how multinational treasury teams make fragmented cash usable.
What is cash pooling? Explain the difference between physical sweeping and notional pooling, and when each can fail.
Asked when companies have slowing core growth and management wants a second engine.
A mature business can invest $100m in its core product or in a new adjacent product. How do you decide?
A first-round question on how corporate finance teams screen investment proposals.
What is a hurdle rate, and should every project at a company use the same one?
A foundational interview question for corporate finance candidates who will support executive capital decisions.
What are the main ways a profitable company can use cash, and how would you frame the choice to a CFO?
A simple calculation question that reveals whether candidates understand a common but incomplete investment screen.
A project costs $100m and generates $25m of annual cash flow. Its payback period is four years. Is that enough to approve it?
Standard in corporate finance and equity research interviews.
A board wants to return $1bn to shareholders. Compare a buyback with a special dividend. Which would you recommend and what determines the answer?
A corporate treasury analyst is asked for a same-day liquidity recommendation before a potentially disruptive weekend.
It is 4:30pm Friday. Your treasurer asks whether to draw the revolver before the weekend after a customer payment slips. Work through the inbox updates and draft the recommendation for the CFO.
Tests whether a candidate sees refinancing as a portfolio-risk problem rather than just a cost-of-debt question.
A company has $3bn of bonds all maturing in the same year. Why is that risky, and how would you redesign its maturity profile?
A common CFO-level case when a cash-generative company is deciding between reinvestment and a buyback.
Your company has $500m of excess cash and its share price has fallen 30%. Should it repurchase shares?
The core treasury question, and it has no single right answer.
A company has $3bn of revenue and holds $800m of cash. Is that too much? How would you determine the right level?
Used in FP&A and strategic finance interviews to test decision-support judgement.
A team wants to outsource a process. The vendor charges $900,000 per year. Keeping it in-house costs $1.2m, but $500,000 of that is unavoidable fixed cost for the next two years. Should the company outsource?
Foundational capital budgeting question across corporate finance interviews.
Two mutually exclusive projects: Project A has an NPV of $10m and an IRR of 15%. Project B has an NPV of $8m and an IRR of 25%. Which do you choose, and why do the two metrics disagree?
Asked at diversified companies deciding where to invest or divest.
How would you run a portfolio review across several business units?
A corporate treasury inbox escalation requiring prioritisation of cash, funding, and stakeholder actions.
You are the treasury analyst for an acquisitive public company after a delayed receivables cycle and an upcoming debt maturity tighten liquidity. Rank the actions as new information arrives, then send the treasurer a…
The central question of corporate finance. Expect it in any strategic finance interview.
A company generates $500m of annual free cash flow. Rank the uses of that cash and explain the framework you'd apply.
A recurring treasury committee decision.
A company has $2bn of floating rate debt. What proportion should be fixed, and how do you decide?
Tests whether a treasury candidate prioritises capital preservation and access over a marginal yield pickup.
Your company has $400m of surplus cash that it does not expect to need for nine months. How would you set the short-term investment policy?
A practical case for finance teams supporting a plant, fulfilment centre or data-centre investment.
Operations proposes a $120m capacity expansion that is NPV-positive in the base case. What would you test before recommending approval?
A senior strategy case that tests capital discipline when an initiative has visible sponsorship but weak evidence.
A three-year growth initiative has consumed $30m. It has $8m of annual revenue, negative $6m of annual contribution profit, and management says the next $15m will unlock scale. How would you recommend whether to fund,…
Corporate strategy interviews use this as the counterpart to the acquisition question.
A diversified company asks you to review its portfolio and recommend divestments. What framework do you use?
A value-creation judgement case where a headline cost saving conflicts with customer and execution risk.
A portfolio company can close one of two plants, saving $6m of annual fixed cost. The move requires $10m of capex and $4m of cash restructuring cost, takes 18 months, and reduces spare capacity from 25% to 5%. The…
A senior analyst case assessing whether a portfolio review recommendation considers cash, stranded costs and opportunity cost rather than headline multiples.
A conglomerate can sell a non-core division for $600m. The division generates $55m of annual EBITDA, requires $25m of capex and uses $80m of working capital. How would you decide whether to sell it?
A partnership-level case that tests capital allocation discipline after an initial growth investment.
You own 8% of a portfolio company. It proposes a new round to fund international expansion, and you can invest pro rata to maintain ownership. How do you decide whether to follow on?
Core to treasury, corporate development and strategic finance interviews.
You're the treasurer of a mid-cap company currently at 1.0x net debt / EBITDA. The CFO asks whether you should lever up to 3.0x and buy back stock. How would you analyse this, and what would you recommend?
Tests offer-ready judgement on an emotionally difficult follow-on decision.
A seed portfolio company has 7 months of cash left. It missed its revenue plan, but retention among its best customer segment is 115% and it can raise a flat round only with existing investors participating. How would…
A treasury case question that tests funding execution, rating protection and contingency planning at once.
Your company is signing a $2bn cash acquisition that closes in six months. How would you build the treasury funding plan before announcement?
Treasury interviews test whether you understand the rating as a constraint on strategy.
Your company is rated BBB and a proposed acquisition would push you to BBB−. Does it matter? What would you do?
Tests decision-making when a portfolio company cannot do every sensible project at once.
Management proposes ten value-creation initiatives but has limited leadership capacity. How do you prioritise them?
A CFO case in which a cost programme must improve near-term liquidity without impairing the recovery.
A company must improve cash flow by $80m this year after demand softens. The CEO proposes an across-the-board 10% operating-expense cut. How would you build a better plan?
A senior treasury judgement question on turning a large reported cash balance into usable capital without ignoring legal-entity constraints.
A group reports $1.0bn of cash, but $600m sits in foreign subsidiaries. The parent has a $250m maturity in eight months and is considering a share repurchase. How would you determine how much cash is genuinely available…
Write your answer, get it graded on technical accuracy, completeness and communication, and see exactly which mechanic you missed.
Firm names indicate where a question type is commonly reported in interviews. They are not sourced from, endorsed by, or affiliated with the firms named.