Case Interview Solution, new: Corporate Finance

Corporate Finance cases are complex. I do not think anyone will disagree with this point. We receive several general requests a week from clients and candidates to determine if they are possible fit for McKinsey or BCG’s corporate finance teams. That is a tough question to answer without conducting a full corporate finance case and assessing performance. To solve this problem, we have created a comprehensive corporate finance case interview video. The candidate may watch this video and assess their performance independently. This is an actual McKinsey case currently used in the New York office. The detailed solutions and animations are entirely our own. We typically only make our 60 Corporate Finance Videos available to those interviewing for this practice, but have made this one video available to all clients to allow them assess their own abilities before choosing to pursue this practice.

The key lesson is that without a granular understanding of the basics of corporate finance, a candidate will never succeed in the interview. To solve corporate finance cases, a candidate must be very, very strong in conceptual strategy and finance. This case does not test arcane finance concepts. In fact, the finance techniques tested are fairly basic. However, to solve the case, the candidate must demonstrate an exceptional understanding of these concepts from the first principles. In preparing candidates for corporate finance cases we fully expect them to see the linkages between the different areas of finance, explain the limitations of the techniques and explain the practical implications of those limitations.

“Draw the WACC curve for a start-up from angel investor funding, through an IPO all the way to reaching maturity and explain the financial needs and likely financial strategy requirements at each stage of the curve?” 

This is not an uncommon question in our screening for corporate finance candidates hoping to join our program.

Corporate finance cases cover a broad area from M&A due diligence, profit maximization, financial strategy, capital markets analyses, post-merger synergy analyses and capturing etc. A lot of skills are required to operate across all these sub-disciplines of finance. At this point Firmsconsulting does not support candidates interviewing for the McKinsey Corporate Performance Center, which is a data analyses center. We only coach general hires for the corporate finance practice. Candidates interviewing for the CPC may access our training material but are not eligible to be coached.

If you want to see a complete consulting study on corporate finance, see this post we did on a recent McKinsey micro-finance engagement or our complete book, and supporting material, on developing a micro-finance recapitalization strategy for an emerging markets bank. The book, analyses and excel models for this fictitious client were so prescient that we were recently invited to present our findings to the South African Department of Trade and Industry. If you feel you are dodging heavy excel modelling by avoiding the finance practice, read this piece about the excel skills needed by liberal arts majors on general consulting engagements.

This case video is animated. Selected screen shots of the video are presented below. Clients will find this video in Corporate Finance Section of the online case solution library. The video is only available to clients of our case coaching service.

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