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Greenhill Interview Questions
These are real technical questions asked in recent Greenhill interviews, sourced directly from candidates who went through the process — not a generic guide. Below: what to expect, worked answers to the most representative questions, and common mistakes that trip candidates up.
What Greenhill's interview process actually looks like
Greenhill's restructuring heritage shows up directly in technical rounds — debt waterfalls, liquidity runway calculations, and distressed valuation show up alongside standard three-statement questions, reflecting the firm's advisory focus on complex and distressed situations.
Real questions asked in recent Greenhill interviews
Question: Walk me through the 3 financial statements when a company earns $100 of subscription revenue at the time of sale but delivers the service evenly over the next 12 months.
How to answer it: At the time of sale, the company collects $100 of cash but hasn't actually earned it yet under accrual accounting, so on the income statement no revenue is recognized immediately; instead, the $100 is recorded as deferred revenue, a liability on the balance sheet, since the company owes the customer 12 months of service. On the cash flow statement, the full $100 shows up as an operating cash inflow at the time of collection, ahead of when it's recognized as revenue, which is why subscription businesses can show operating cash flow well ahead of reported revenue. Each month, roughly $8.33 (100 divided by 12) is recognized as revenue on the income statement and the deferred revenue liability on the balance sheet is drawn down by the same amount, with no further cash impact, since the cash was already collected upfront; by month 12, the full $100 has flowed through the income statement and deferred revenue has been reduced to zero.
Common mistake: Recognizing the full $100 as revenue immediately at the time of cash collection instead of deferring it and recognizing it ratably over the service period
Question: In a distressed company's capital structure, why do restructuring bankers build a debt waterfall showing enterprise value allocated across each tranche, and what does it tell equity holders?
How to answer it: A debt waterfall lines up every tranche of the capital structure in priority order, first lien, second lien, unsecured, and so on, and shows how a given estimate of total enterprise value gets allocated down that stack, with each tranche filled before the next one receives anything. This tells stakeholders exactly where the enterprise value breaks, meaning the tranche at which recovery goes from 100 cents on the dollar to something less than full, which is the critical dividing line in any restructuring negotiation since everyone senior to that break is arguing they should be made whole and everyone junior to it is arguing about how to split what's left. For equity holders specifically, the waterfall usually delivers the uncomfortable answer that if the value break happens above where equity sits, which is common in a genuine restructuring, equity's claim is effectively worthless regardless of what the pre-restructuring stock price implied, since equity is last in line after all debt classes.
Common mistake: Not identifying that the waterfall's key output is the specific tranche where value breaks from full to partial recovery, rather than just listing the tranches
Also reported from recent interviews at this firm:
- A distressed company has $40M of cash, is burning $5M per month, and has an undrawn $20M revolver it can still access. How would you frame its liquidity runway, and why does a restructuring banker care about this number specifically?
- For a distressed company with negative EBITDA, how would you even begin to estimate enterprise value, given that a standard EV/EBITDA multiple approach breaks down?
Full explanations and common mistakes for these — plus the rest of our Firm Specific bank — are in the app.
How to prepare specifically for Greenhill
Generic IB prep guides cover the fundamentals every bank tests, but firm-specific patterns like the ones above only show up when you're practicing against real, recently-reported questions rather than a static 400-question PDF everyone else is also using. ApexIB's Firm Specific question bank is built directly from questions candidates report after their actual interviews — including Greenhill — with AI grading and full explanations, not just a list.
Frequently asked questions
Does Greenhill focus on restructuring technicals in interviews?
Yes, noticeably more than a typical generalist shop — debt waterfalls, liquidity runway, and distressed valuation concepts come up regularly alongside standard M&A and three-statement questions.
Where do these questions come from?
Directly from candidates who interviewed at Greenhill and reported their questions afterward, not from a generic template applied to every firm.
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