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Houlihan Lokey interview questions

27 questions researched across 1 Houlihan Lokey seat in Financial Restructuring. Below are 12 of them.

Seats we researched

  • AnalystFinancial Restructuring · graduate · 30 min

12 Houlihan Lokey interview questions

  1. What are the characteristics of a distressed company? What would actually tell you a business is heading for a restructuring?

  2. How do you reflect a hundred dollars of PIK interest through the three statements? Assume a forty percent tax rate.

  3. Say EBITDA is thirty, the right multiple is five times, and the company has a hundred of Term Loan A and a hundred of senior notes. What does recovery look like through the capital structure — and would the equity trade at zero before a filing?

  4. What kinds of restructurings do we actually do here?

  5. Walk me through the waterfall and where the fulcrum security sits.

  6. How does a liquidation analysis differ from a going-concern valuation?

  7. Tell me about a time you stayed calm when others did not.

  8. Walk me through the difference between a Chapter 7 and a Chapter 11, and how that choice changes recoveries for each creditor class.

  9. How does a Section 363 asset sale differ from selling the business through a plan, and when would you advise one over the other?

  10. Step back to a normal buyout for a second: walk me through a basic LBO and tell me which levers drive the sponsor's returns.

  11. Which industries do you think are most exposed to distress in the current cycle, and why?

  12. Quick one: what is the angle between the hour and minute hands of a clock at three fifteen?

What a strong answer does

The questions above fall into 3 kinds. What a strong answer does differs by kind, not by question.

Technical10 of 12 above
State the intuition first; walk through the mechanics; make assumptions explicit; test a risk or edge case; connect the answer to the role.
Behavioral1 of 12 above
Lead with the claim and context; isolate your personal action and decision; explain the trade-off; quantify the result; finish with what you learned and changed.
Market1 of 12 above
State a view; support it with evidence and a catalyst; explain valuation or transmission; give the strongest countercase; name the risk that would change your mind.

15 more Houlihan Lokey questions

The rest of the bank — 27 in total — is asked by the interviewer during practice, so you meet them the way you would on the day rather than reading them first.

Practise Houlihan Lokey questions

How these questions were researched

Every question carries a provenance grade. Some were reported by candidates who sat the round, some come from the firm’s own published guidance or a source that trains for it, and the rest are written to match how this firm asks. Each seat is studied on its own — the round it actually runs, the order it runs it in, and what it is listening for. A Houlihan Lokey round is not a generic behavioural screen, and practising one as the other is how people walk in unprepared.

Falas is not affiliated with or endorsed by any employer named. Simulations are independent practice based on publicly described recruiting formats.