5 Keys to Win Investment Banking Case Competition

The Non-Target Playbook 

By Jack Kolb

(LinkedIn)

The one award bankers respect most on a resume is 1st Place in a case comp.

It shows you already impressed a panel of ex-bankers...

Which is a clear indicator you have the technical & soft skills to be a rockstar analyst.

In college, I did four of them and took home first place in two.

I’ve also been on the other side now and judged my first one last year.

The approach to winning is simple.

You have to show you fully grasp the role of a banker and know how they think about positioning a company.

But you only have two weeks to throw the pitch deck together, so here’s exactly what you should focus on first.

KEY #1 - UNDERSTAND THE OBJECTIVE

IB case comps mock the real world process bankers call a “bake off”.

A perfect analogy for this process is selecting a real estate agent to help you sell your house.

Home sellers typically interview four or five agents before choosing one to go find them buyers.

A “bake off” / “pitching” in banking is the same idea, but with companies instead of houses.

In the competition, you pretend the company you’re meeting with is ready to sell its ownership stake.

You give a sales pitch to the “management team” to convince them to hire your bank over the others.

Your pitch should show how pretty you’ll make their company look on paper so you can convince buyers to pay top dollar.

It’s really just glorified marketing.

KEY #2 - START WITH A STORYLINE

You’ll be tempted to jump in right away and start cranking out slides, but that’s a rookie mistake.

Both my winning teams spent the first two days reading.

Here’s what we read up on to “get smart” on the company & industry.

• 10-K’s & 10-Q’s: Focus on MD&A section, look at how they segment revenue, find who they view competition to be

• Investor Presentations & Earnings Transcripts: Listen for drivers of recent performance, understand their strategy

• Industry Reports: Look for trends, who main players are, differentiators, competitors

• Equity Research: See how market views the company (initiating coverage reports are best if available)

Take notes on the most attractive aspects of the company, including their

• Sustainable competitive advantage

• Key positioning in attractive segments

• Recent performance (growth, margins, etc.)

• Market trends

Then read the case comp description very close to figure out the motivations and priorities of the “management team”.

Your main takeaways from those two actions will allow you to craft the perfect narrative.

See below an example of a storyline from one of my winning decks.

In this one, we played the “family business” angle hard.

The case description hinted the retiring owners prioritized leaving their loyal employees in good hands.

Our presentation made it clear we’d help the owners avoid selling to some cold-hearted private equity firm that might fire all those employees right after the transaction.

This narrative should be highlighted over and over in every single part of your presentation.

The example below shows how we incorporated the family values narrative within our buyer list.

KEY #3 - BENCHMARKING

Bankers are in charge of setting the listing price to start the bidding for the company being sold.

Benchmarking is the number one way to show management you know what that right price should be.

It’s basically just showing how their company stacks up in its competitive environment

Here's an example.

You should have one of these slides for both your public comps and your precedent transactions.

These slides will drive the valuation portion of your cohesive narrative.

A couple things to keep in mind when crafting these.

1. Highlight them OUTPERFORMING competition

• Remember your role is a salesman. Your job is to paint their company in the brightest light possible to potential buyers

• Show management you’d frame their company in a way that'd make buyers pay top dollar if they choose you as the bank to represent them

2. Voice why NOW is best time for them to sell

• Show you’ll highlight RECENT growth / profitability to buyers to convince them to pay a premium for their company

KEY #4 - USE CLEAN TEMPLATES

To make the company look pretty, your slides and model need to look pretty too.

But DO NOT waste time on formatting during those short two weeks.

Here are a couple tips on best style practices and how to avoid creating it all from scratch.

SLIDE MASTER

Set up a template in PPT before those two weeks start.

This basically just lets you have a consistent layout for each slide.

Here are the elements of what each master should include.

1. Font & Color: Use Garamond & change color palette at top to match company

2. Company Logo: Top right corner

3. Bank Logo: Bottom left corner – take five min & use free logo generator for your fake “bank”

4. Timeline: Bottom of page, have separate copy in master for each “section” and color in bars appropriately

5. Page #

COLLECT EXAMPLES

Don’t re-invent the wheel for your slide design / model.

Use Google and upperclassmen to get your hands on some old decks / models you can use as a starting point.

There are also websites like M&I that have free downloads.

KEY #5 - BE AN ACTOR DURING PRESENTATION

To win a case comp, you need to be an incredible actor.

You have to FULLY PRETEND you’re a REAL banker and the panel is a REAL management team.

Here’s an opening line you can use that’ll give you brownie points immediately.

“…Good morning everyone. I’d like to thank you all once again for taking the time to sit down with us today. We’d just like to start out by saying congratulations on the ~impressive~ business you’ve built over the past decade…..It’s an absolute privilege to have the chance to represent your company as you begin to think about that next step…”

There are two ways to show the judges you're in the mindset of actually presenting to management.

1. WORDS IN YOUR SLIDES

Pretend you’re presenting to founders that have never taken a finance class before.

Include slides like the one below to explain certain concepts to those with no finance background.

*Obviously, a panel of bankers will know the difference between strategic and financial buyers, but you have to pretend they don’t

2. WORDS YOU SAY

Speak in the second-person.

This means saying “You” / “Your” / “Your Business” - NOT “The Company / “They” / etc.

GO SIGN UP

If your school doesn’t offer any case competitions, go sign up for the third-party one held by NIBC at https://www.nibclive.com/.

Even if you don’t win gold, you'll get some stellar bullets to add to your resume they'll love to ask about in interviews.

Cheers 🥂

- Jack

LinkedIn