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UBS Interview Questions
These are real technical questions asked in recent UBS 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 UBS's interview process actually looks like
UBS' generalist technicals emphasize reconciling conflicting outputs — comparing leverage impact under debt versus stock financing, and explaining a real gap between comps and DCF valuation ranges in a way a client could actually follow, not just picking the number you like.
Real questions asked in recent UBS interviews
Question: Company A has an EV of $1B, EBITDA of $200M, and is levered 2.5x. It acquires Company B, which has EBITDA of $100M, financing the deal entirely with $250M of new debt. How does this transaction affect Company A's leverage, and what would change if the deal were instead funded entirely with stock?
How to answer it: Company A starts with $500M of debt, 2.5x times $200M of EBITDA; adding $250M of new debt to fund the acquisition brings total debt to $750M, while combined EBITDA becomes $300M, $200M plus the target's $100M, so pro forma leverage becomes 2.5x, $750M divided by $300M, unchanged from where the acquirer started, since in this specific case the debt raised happens to scale proportionally with the EBITDA added. If the deal were instead funded entirely with stock, Company A's debt stays at $500M while combined EBITDA still rises to $300M, so pro forma leverage would actually fall to about 1.67x, $500M divided by $300M, meaningfully de-levering the combined company. This is the core insight the question is testing: financing choice directly drives whether an acquisition increases, holds flat, or decreases leverage, independent of whether the deal itself is a good one on a standalone valuation basis.
Common mistake: Calculating pro forma leverage using only the acquirer's pre-deal EBITDA instead of the combined EBITDA of both companies
Question: Company A has a stock price of $10 per share and $4 of cash flow per share. Company B has a stock price of $20 per share and $8 of cash flow per share. If Company A acquires Company B in an all-stock deal, is the transaction accretive or dilutive to Company A's cash flow per share?
How to answer it: The quick way to answer this is to compare each company's cash flow yield, cash flow per share divided by stock price, since that tells you which company's stock is more expensive relative to the cash flow it generates. Company A's yield is $4 divided by $10, or 40%, and Company B's yield is $8 divided by $20, also 40%, so the two companies are trading at exactly the same cash flow yield, meaning the deal is neutral, neither accretive nor dilutive, to Company A's cash flow per share in an all-stock transaction. This mirrors P/E-based accretion/dilution logic: when the acquirer and target trade at the same implied multiple, here the inverse of cash flow yield, issuing stock to buy the target doesn't change per-share economics, and the same-yield case is a useful sanity check interviewers use to confirm you understand the underlying mechanic rather than pattern-matching to 'higher multiple acquirer means accretive.'
Common mistake: Comparing raw cash flow per share ($4 vs $8) directly instead of first normalizing each figure into a yield relative to stock price
Also reported from recent interviews at this firm:
- You've built a comps analysis implying a valuation range of $40-45 per share and a DCF implying $55-60 per share for the same company. In a client-facing setting, how do you reconcile that gap rather than just picking one method?
- You're comparing a US company to a European peer in a comps analysis, and the European company has a meaningfully lower effective tax rate. How does that affect which multiples are actually comparable?
Full explanations and common mistakes for these — plus the rest of our Firm Specific bank — are in the app.
How to prepare specifically for UBS
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 UBS — with AI grading and full explanations, not just a list.
Frequently asked questions
Does UBS ask you to reconcile different valuation methods in interviews?
Yes, this is a recurring pattern — expect to be given a comps range and a DCF range that disagree and asked to explain the gap, not just state a preferred answer.
Where do these questions come from?
Directly from candidates who interviewed at UBS and reported their questions afterward, not from a generic template applied to every firm.
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