Interview QUESTIONS and ANSWERS

Interview QUESTIONS and ANSWERS Why Deloitte? - global leader in professional services - Deloitte has people first approach, where the company focuses on developing people, through career-long learning initiatives - I believe having come straight out of university, my biggest goal is develop myself professionally in an challenging and rewarding environment, that Deloitte would provide - consistently named as the best place to launch a career by Bloomberg - this is not purely from me doing research about the company either, a close friend of mine, was an intern in the Corp Fi advisory line recently, and told me in great detail about how encouraging and supportive the staff were at Deloitte, which left a really positive impression on me - in terms of mobility, I am someone that highly values learning about different cultures, having grown up in various cultures myself, being a global business leader, Deloitte would provide the opportunity to work globally and develop cross-cultural competencies Why corporate finance? - My interest in finance started at a young age, when I first joined a stock picking competition at school - I gradually read more and more financial news, and tried to apply some of the concepts at school to what I learnt - My interest in corporate finance in particular really started when I studied the subject at university, I was intrigued by being able to work with huge companies on mulit billion dollar deals that could have a visible impact on an industry - I also excelled academically at the subject, and this passion led me to co-found the investment banking career skills seminar series at my university, where we aimed to educate students on the various industries within finance, and even worked together with institutions such as GS Talk to me about a recent deal that interests you? - The recent acquisition of Lazada by Alibaba - Alibaba is Chinese e-commerce company that provides b2b, b2c and c2c services via web platforms, which went public in 2014 - currently has a market cap of about 200 billion - Lazada is a privately owned e-commerce company in Singapore, which focuses on online clothing and electronic sales, seen as the no1. online shopping company in SE Asia - This deal is the largest overseas investment BABA has made to date, investing 1bn in acquiring a controlling stake in Lazada - 500m in new shares and 500m from existing stakeholders - This values the Lazada at 1.5bn dollars - The rationale behind the deal is that it gives Alibaba immediate access to all of Lazada's 6 south-east asian markets, which is in-line with Alibaba's goal of generating half of its revenue from overseas - The deal values Lazada at 5.9 times sales, which is not overly expensive considering Alibaba trades at 13 times sales - However Lazada is yet to make a profit - Personally, I think the deal creates great value for Alibaba, through not only enabling access to a new markets, but specifically to South East Asia's biggest market, Indonesia, which has a population of slighly over 250m people, which represents a huge growth opportunity - it gives it a solid footing for expansion within SE Asia and provides an essential transport and payments infrastructure crucial to e-commerce - Furthermore Alibaba can leverage its existing merchants to integrate with Lazada to provide them with access to overseas markets Why not an investment bank? - I'd be lying to you if I said Deloitte was the only place I have applied to, given the competitive nature of the industry, applicants have to maximise their possibilities - however given the choice between working at an investment bank in CF and at Deloitte, an accounting firm I would choose Deloitte - working in an investment bank currently, talk about short sighted mindset, selfish culture, where people are more concerned about their bonus and their job security rather than looking to deliver value for clients and promoting a learning culture - which is why I would choose Deloitte Questions to ask interviewers? - Could you describe the structure of the Corporate Finance department to me? - How would you describe the culture at Deloitte? - ask question which doesnt require much effort - typical day like? - what would be the career progression be like, for an associate that performs will at Deloitte