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Solomon Partners Interview Questions
These are real technical questions asked in recent Solomon Partners 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 Solomon Partners's interview process actually looks like
Solomon Partners' generalist M&A rounds test genuine comfort manipulating multiples algebraically — deriving an implied EBITDA margin from just two given multiples — alongside communication-focused prompts like explaining public comps analysis in plain language.
Real questions asked in recent Solomon Partners interviews
Question: A company increases depreciation by $10, but it's currently in a net operating loss position and pays no cash taxes. How does the three-statement flow-through change compared to a normal, tax-paying company?
How to answer it: For a normal tax-paying company, a $10 increase in depreciation reduces pre-tax income by $10 and net income by roughly $7.50 after a 25% tax benefit, with cash increasing by $2.50 net from the tax shield. For a company in an NOL position paying no actual cash taxes, that tax benefit doesn't translate into real cash savings in the current period, since there's no tax bill to reduce; instead, the $10 pretax loss increases the company's NOL carryforward, a deferred tax asset, which can be used to offset taxable income in future profitable years. So on the income statement, net income still falls by the full $10 pretax amount rather than being tax-affected down to $7.50, since no tax benefit is being recognized as currently realizable, and on the cash flow statement, the depreciation add-back still happens but there's no offsetting cash tax savings this period, meaning cash actually increases by the full $10 rather than just $2.50, since no cash tax was being paid either way. The nuance interviewers are testing is that the tax shield only provides real cash value when there's actual tax liability to shield against, which isn't the case for an NOL company in the current period.
Common mistake: Applying the standard tax-affected treatment, net income down by the after-tax amount, to a company that isn't actually paying cash taxes in the current period
Question: You're given a company's Revenue, its EV/EBITDA multiple, and its EV/Revenue multiple. How would you calculate its implied EBITDA margin using just those three inputs?
How to answer it: EV/Revenue divided by EV/EBITDA gives you EBITDA divided by Revenue directly, since the EV terms in the numerator and denominator cancel out, leaving EBITDA over Revenue, which is exactly the EBITDA margin. For example, if EV/Revenue is 3.0x and EV/EBITDA is 12.0x, dividing 3.0 by 12.0 gives 0.25, or a 25% EBITDA margin, without needing to know the actual dollar value of EV at all. This is a useful mental math shortcut because it lets you back into a company's profitability profile purely from its trading multiples, which is often how you'd sanity-check a comps set: two companies with similar EV/Revenue multiples but very different implied EBITDA margins derived this way should probably not be trading at the same EV/Revenue multiple, since the market should be pricing profitability differences somewhere.
Common mistake: Trying to solve for EBITDA margin by estimating actual dollar EV first instead of recognizing the two multiples can be divided directly to cancel out EV
Also reported from recent interviews at this firm:
- Explain public comps analysis to a five-year-old.
- Pitch me a merger: pick two companies and explain why the deal would make strategic sense.
Full explanations and common mistakes for these — plus the rest of our Firm Specific bank — are in the app.
How to prepare specifically for Solomon Partners
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 Solomon Partners — with AI grading and full explanations, not just a list.
Frequently asked questions
Does Solomon Partners test multiples manipulation beyond standard definitions?
Yes — expect questions that require algebraically combining two given multiples to derive a third metric, not just reciting what each multiple means.
Where do these questions come from?
Directly from candidates who interviewed at Solomon Partners and reported their questions afterward, not from a generic template applied to every firm.
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