So, let’s say hypothetically you’ve managed to land an interview at UBS. You’ve worked hard to get to this point, and you’re very proud of your achievement. As you should be: not everyone gets to the interview stage when applying to UBS, it’s an achievement in itself!
Now all you need to do is survive the interview. Instead of meditating, fretting about your suitability, or planning what to spend your first month’s salary on, you need prepare, prepare and prepare again. You need to know the questions you’ll be asked so that you can survive whatever’s thrown at you and persuade the line manager or recruiter who’ll be interviewing you that you’re best for the job.
Below, we’ve summarized the most common UBS interview questions from the recent hiring round, for the investment banking division (IDB – M&A, equity capital markets and debt capital markets), for markets (sales and trading) and for technology. If you’re interviewing for any of these roles, you’ll need to be able to answer the questions below – at least.
IDB (Investment Banking Division) interview questions at UBS
Using your knowledge of the current financial climate, can you propose an M&A deal that you think should happen?
What is the role of a Corporate Client Solutions team?
We’re creating a DCF (discounted cash flow) for a company that has plans to acquire a factory for $100 in cash in year four. The present enterprise value of our company is currently $200 according to the DCF. How would we change the DCF to account for the factory purchase, and what would our new Enterprise Value be?
In the Enterprise Value formula, why is the cash subtracted?
To the best of your ability, tell us about a deal that UBS has made recently.
Explain to me how a DCF is constructed and implemented.
Explain to me how an LBO (leveraged buyout) is constructed and implemented.
To calculate fully diluted shares, what would you do?
An equity investor can predict what kind of return they can expect on their investment in a given company using cost of equity, but what sort of information could they get using dividends?
A company is acquiring another company with a P/E of 14. What will the cost of debt need to be to make this deal accretive?
Sales and trading interview questions at UBS
What interests do you have other than trading?
Given the choice, using your knowledge of the current financial climate, which company would you invest in?
What are your opinions on what the world will be like in the year 2050?
Pick a stock of your choice, then pitch it to me.
What sort effect might a macro event have on your stock?
How is the risk (the Brownian motion part) constructed in HJM (Heath-Jarrow-Morton) model?
Tell me about a recent development in the market?
Tell me about a trend that you know of in the current market?
To the best of your ability, define VaR.
If 80% of Ford’s sales are in Europe, what would happen to company’s annual revenue if the exchange rate declined from 1.5 to 1.
To the best of your ability, define Basell III.
Technology interview questions at UBS
What advantages does Object Oriented Programming provide over other language types?
Give me a detailed breakdown of the OSI (Open Systems Interconnection) Model.
What would the SCRUM methodology entail?
What is a Prince2 methodology?
What is the difference between TCP (transmission control protocol) and UDP (user datagram protocol)?
How would you check, on a Unix system, if process is alive/running on the machine?
What are benefits of using ConcurrentHashMap over synchronized HashMap?
What is the Fibonacci sequence and how can you program that using recursion?
Explain to me what Composite Pattern is, using File System sources as an example.
Sources: Glassdoor.com; WallStreetOasis.com; Vault.com
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