Would the expected IRR for a toll road investment be different if the toll road was in India versus Indiana? Why or why not?
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Macquarie IB Interview Questions
Macquarie investment banking interview questions from candidate reports. Format, core technicals, and the sector-focused questions Macquarie tends to ask.
Macquarie rewards candidates who are solid on the fundamentals and show genuine interest in the group and its sectors. Macquarie is a global financial group with an investment banking and advisory platform, particularly in infrastructure and resources. First rounds stay close to the core technicals; later rounds get more sector-specific.
OFFERGOBLIN tags every Macquarie-specific question candidates have reported. Use Bank & Round mode in the Accelerated tier to drill the core technicals plus the sector-flavored follow-ups Macquarie tends to ask.
Sample Macquarie IB Interview Questions
A short sample from the full bank. Tap an answer to reveal it.
- Macquarie
Yes. A toll road in India would typically have a higher expected IRR (internal rate of return, the yearly return an investment's cash flows produce) than one in Indiana. Investors want to be paid for the extra risks: currency, political and regulatory, construction, and traffic-forecast risk. In the riskier market they pay less for the same expected cash flows, and that pushes the expected IRR up.
- Macquarie
You have 60 seconds to value a bank. What information do you need? Should you care more about its past or its expected performance?
You need tangible book value, forward ROE/ROTCE, asset quality (NPLs/provisions), NIM, capital ratios, and comparable P/TBV multiples; expected performance matters far more because the multiple applied to book value is entirely driven by forward earnings power.
- Macquarie
If Jimmy can paint a house in 3 hours, and John can paint a house in 2 hours, how long does it take them to paint a house, working together?
Working together, they can paint the house in 6/5 hours (1 hour and 12 minutes), found by summing their individual rates (1/3 + 1/2 = 5/6 house per hour) and inverting, or using the shortcut (3×2)/(3+2).
- Macquarie
What is the current price of a 2-year zero coupon bond if the interest rate is 8%? Don't just give a formula — explain your logic of what you think the price would be and why.
The price is $857.34, because you discount the $1,000 face value back two years at 8%: $1,000 ÷ (1.08)² = $1,000 ÷ 1.1664, reflecting what you'd pay today to earn 8% compounded annually over two years.
- Macquarie
Walk me through a project finance model.
A project finance model sizes non-recourse debt around an SPV's CFADS by modeling construction sources/uses, operating cash flows, a contractual waterfall, sculpting principal repayments to maintain target DSCR each period, and deriving equity IRR from residual distributions.
- Macquarie
What are your revenue assumptions when building a DCF for a toll road, and how do you model them?
Revenue equals traffic volume times average toll rate, modeled by projecting traffic by vehicle class using GDP-linked growth rates, ramp-up factors, and elasticity adjustments, then applying contractual toll escalation mechanisms—typically CPI-linked—across the concession life.
- Macquarie
What IRR would an investor be looking for when investing in a toll road?
For a mature, operating toll road in a developed market, investors typically target a levered equity IRR of 8%–12%, rising to 13%–18% for greenfield projects carrying construction and traffic ramp risk.
- Macquarie
Walk me through a DCF for a toll road.
Forecast traffic volumes by vehicle class times toll rates for revenue, subtract low opex and lumpy lifecycle capex to get FCFF, then discount over the finite concession life at a low WACC—no terminal value since the asset reverts to government.
- Macquarie
Where do you see yourself in 10 years? What will your biography say about you and your greatest accomplishments?
- Macquarie
Why Macquarie?
- Macquarie
Why the infrastructure group at Macquarie rather than one of Macquarie's other groups?
- Macquarie
Why are you interested in infrastructure?
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