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Moelis & Company Interview Questions
These are real technical questions asked in recent Moelis & Company 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 Moelis & Company's interview process actually looks like
Moelis' interviews span its three core practices — M&A, restructuring, and capital markets — so expect anything from accretion/dilution math to a full paper LBO to restructuring-specific questions about out-of-court exchanges, often in the same round.
Real questions asked in recent Moelis & Company interviews
Question: A company trading at 10x P/E wants to acquire a company trading at 20x P/E in an all-cash deal funded entirely with new debt. What's the maximum after-tax cost of debt the acquirer could pay and still have the deal be accretive?
How to answer it: Buying a higher-multiple target with a lower-multiple acquirer's stock would normally be dilutive, but funding the deal with debt instead flips the comparison to the target's earnings yield versus the after-tax cost of that debt, independent of the acquirer's own multiple. The target's earnings yield is 1/20x, or 5%, so as long as the after-tax cost of debt stays below roughly 5%, the deal stays accretive; above that threshold it turns dilutive. The acquirer's own 10x multiple is actually irrelevant to whether the debt-funded piece is accretive; it only matters if the deal were funded with stock, which is the trap most candidates fall into by instinctively comparing the two P/E multiples out of habit. This is why the source of financing, not just the relative multiples, determines the direction of accretion or dilution.
Common mistake: Comparing the acquirer's 10x P/E to the target's 20x P/E and concluding the deal is automatically dilutive, ignoring that it's debt-funded
Question: Quick paper LBO: a sponsor buys a company for 8x EBITDA of $100M, funds it with 5.5x leverage, and exits in year 5 at the same 8x multiple with EBITDA grown to $150M. Roughly what IRR does the sponsor earn, assuming excess cash flow pays down debt?
How to answer it: Entry EV is 8x $100M, or $800M, and 5.5x leverage means $550M of debt with the sponsor writing a $250M equity check. At exit, EV is 8x $150M, or $1.2B; assuming debt paydown from free cash flow brings debt down to roughly $250M over five years (a reasonable paper-LBO assumption absent more detail), equity value at exit is about $950M. That's roughly a 3.8x multiple on the $250M initial equity check over five years, which works out to an IRR in the low-30s percent range using the rule of thumb that MOIC over 5 years approximates to roughly MOIC^(1/5) minus 1. The mechanics worth stating out loud are that returns come from three levers, EBITDA growth, multiple expansion or compression, and debt paydown, and here all the return is coming from EBITDA growth and deleveraging since entry and exit multiples are held flat.
Common mistake: Forgetting to net exit equity value against remaining debt rather than using the full exit EV as the return to equity
Also reported from recent interviews at this firm:
- Why might a distressed company and its creditors prefer an out-of-court debt exchange over a formal Chapter 11 filing?
- Walk through how a $20 increase in inventory, funded by drawing on the revolver, flows through the three statements.
Full explanations and common mistakes for these — plus the rest of our Firm Specific bank — are in the app.
How to prepare specifically for Moelis & Company
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 Moelis & Company — with AI grading and full explanations, not just a list.
Frequently asked questions
Does Moelis test M&A, restructuring, or LBO technicals?
All three show up, reflecting the firm's practice mix — don't walk in prepared for just one technical area.
Where do these questions come from?
Directly from candidates who interviewed at Moelis & Company and reported their questions afterward, not from a generic template applied to every firm.
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