Investment Banking
Houlihan Lokey Application Guide
The undisputed global leader in financial restructuring and the dominant adviser on US M&A under $1 billion, a pure-play independent investment bank. Every stage of the process, the questions Houlihan Lokey actually asks, and the prep that gets candidates through, in one place.
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The firm
About Houlihan Lokey
The business today
Houlihan Lokey (NYSE: HLI) is a premier global independent investment bank built on three businesses: Corporate Finance (middle-market M&A and capital markets), Financial Restructuring, and Financial and Valuation Advisory (FVA). Unlike bulge brackets that use their balance sheet to win advisory mandates, Houlihan Lokey is pure-play advisory, which keeps it free of the lending conflicts that complicate larger institutions.
The firm holds a highly distinctive market position. It is the undisputed global leader in financial restructuring, regularly outranking PJT, Lazard and Moelis by both deal volume and aggregate advised liabilities, and it has held a multi-decade position as the No. 1 adviser for US and global M&A transactions under $1 billion according to LSEG data. Its FVA division is the premier global practice for fairness opinions and portfolio valuations.
For the fiscal year ended March 31, 2025, Houlihan Lokey reported record net revenues of $2.39 billion, up 25% on the $1.91 billion of FY2024 (diluted GAAP EPS rose from $4.11 to $5.82), driven by a rebound in middle-market M&A and sustained restructuring and valuation volume. Global headcount exceeds 2,600. Recent expansion includes the June 2026 agreement to acquire Intrepid Financial Partners (adding 34 professionals to the Oil and Gas group), building on GCA Altium, Oaklins Italy and Triago.
Leadership is anchored by long-tenured executives: Scott J. Adelson became CEO in March 2024, succeeding Scott Beiser (now Co-Chairman alongside Irwin Gold), with Eric Siegert, Global Co-Head of Financial Restructuring, also serving as Co-Chairman. The culture is high-performance and pragmatic, valuing execution, hard data and early client exposure.
Why people apply to Houlihan Lokey
You accept structural trade-offs. Houlihan Lokey does not regularly lead front-page $20+ billion cross-border buyouts, which remain the domain of bulge brackets and large-cap boutiques like Centerview or Evercore. Base pay can occasionally trail the absolute top-of-market premiums paid by select elite boutiques during peak M&A cycles, and the hours are demanding, especially in restructuring. In exchange you get deal velocity, early responsibility, a world-leading restructuring franchise and outstanding buy-side exits.
You want counter-cyclical dominance. The Financial Restructuring division keeps deal flow and bonus pools robust through downturns: when M&A stalls across the Street, corporate distress spikes and Houlihan Lokey reallocates resources to stay busy.
You want execution reps. Because Corporate Finance targets the middle market (deals under $1 billion) alongside larger mandates, analysts close an exceptionally high number of transactions. A second-year may work on 8-10 closed deals, where a bulge-bracket peer might spend two years on a single mega-merger that ultimately breaks on regulatory grounds.
You want elite training and exits. The FVA division builds a respected analytical foundation in corporate finance and regulatory valuation, and lean deal teams (often one MD, one VP, one Associate, one Analyst) push juniors to present model outputs and join client management early. Restructuring alumni place into the best distressed and special-situations funds on the Street.
Divisions inside Houlihan Lokey's Investment Banking
Corporate Finance (CF)
Day-to-day
The M&A and capital-markets arm: buyside and sellside M&A, debt and equity raises and sponsor transactions across 10 industry verticals (Business Services, Consumer, Industrials, Technology, the newly expanded Oil and Gas group). Analysts manage buyer logs, assemble CIMs, build three-statement models and DCFs, and construct pitchbooks. NY runs industrials, healthcare and tech volume; LA runs media, entertainment and consumer; Chicago is strong in industrials; San Francisco leads tech; Houston anchors Oil and Gas.
Interview style
Practical and structured, with a notable debt-heavy bias for an M&A group: three-statement links, EV-to-equity bridges, LBO intuition, plus leverage ratios, interest coverage and bank debt vs high-yield.
High difficultyFinancial Restructuring (FR)
Day-to-day
One of the most elite restructuring groups in the world, advising debtors or creditors through liquidity crises and Chapter 11. Analysts model complex capital structures, evaluate covenants, run 13-week liquidity models and simulate recoveries under liquidation frameworks. The center of gravity is New York, followed by Los Angeles and Chicago. National intake is roughly 25-40 lines.
Interview style
The steepest bar on the Street: waterfalls and absolute priority, fulcrum security, DIP financing, automatic stay, cramdown, Section 363 sales and liability management (drop-downs, up-tiering). Interviewers assume advanced knowledge of credit agreements and capital-structure math.
Extreme difficultyFinancial and Valuation Advisory (FVA)
Day-to-day
Independent valuations, fairness opinions, solvency opinions and technical advisory to boards, special committees and asset managers. Analysts master comparable companies, precedent transactions and asset-level valuation; the pace is faster with shorter projects, so juniors see a huge volume of unique companies each quarter. Broad footprint across LA, NY, Chicago, Dallas and San Francisco.
Interview style
Deeply technical valuation theory: ASC 820 fair value, asset impairment, Purchase Price Allocation, goodwill, and Level 3 / illiquid asset valuation via option-pricing and calibrated frameworks. Prioritizes exceptional accounting skills.
Moderate-high difficultyTry it now
Score your Resume against Houlihan Lokey's screen
Houlihan Lokey talent acquisition screens thousands of Resumes per cycle. Most are read in under 30 seconds. The candidates who get to interview have Resumes that signal commercial relevance fast, in the format Houlihan Lokey expects.
What Houlihan Lokey looks for in a Resume
Quantified impact
Numbers in every bullet: deal size, team size, percentage uplift, revenue managed. "Led a team" is filler, "led a 6-person team that delivered £400k of revenue" is a signal.
Named firms and deals
Houlihan Lokey recruiters skim for brand names they recognise. Name your prior internships, the deals you observed, the clients you worked on. Specifics beat generic descriptions.
Industry-relevant language
Use the vocabulary of the investment banking world: DCF, comps, LBO, league tables, deal flow. Generic "analysed data" reads as not-yet-in-the-industry; the right terms read as ready.
Tight, structured layout
One page max. Reverse-chronological. Three to five bullets per role. No long paragraphs, no dense blocks. The skim test decides the read.
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The application
How Houlihan Lokey hires
6 stages, real interview questions, the criteria that decide it, and the moves that separate offers from rejections.
The process, stage by stage
- 1
Online Application
Opens heavily January-March of sophomore year for the following summer; rolling, core pipelines fill by May-June.Apply in the first week with a one-page, quantified resume. For non-targets, secure an alumni referral so HR pulls your file.
- 2
Online Assessment (Suited)
Triggered automatically or within 48 hours of application; 72-120 hours to complete; ~15-30 minutes of active testing.A Suited cognitive (math/logic) plus behavioral profile. Prioritize speed and educated guesses; answer behavioral prompts consistently.
- 3
HireVue Digital Interview
About 1 week after passing the OA; a hard 48-72 hour window to complete.3-5 (CF/FVA) up to 5-6 (FR) recorded questions, 30 seconds prep and 90-120 seconds per answer, no retakes. Structure with STAR and look at the lens.
- 4
First Round / Phone Screen
1-2 weeks post-HireVue; a 30-45 minute technical and behavioral call.With an Analyst, Associate or VP in your target group. Master the three-statement links, EV vs equity value, and (for FR) capital-structure mechanics.
- 5
Superday
June-November of sophomore year, 10-12 months before the internship; 4-6 hours of back-to-back interviews.3-5 panels with VPs, Directors and MDs plus an analyst lunch. Stay consistent and energetic across every round; offers come within 2-24 hours.
- 6
Offer
Verbal offer within 2-24 hours of the Superday roundtable.Houlihan Lokey moves fast and converts 80-90% of its summer class to full-time. Respond promptly.
What Houlihan Lokey asks at each round
First Round
- Why Houlihan Lokey and not a traditional bulge bracket firm?
- Why this specific product group (Financial Restructuring vs Corporate Finance)?
- Walk me through your resume in under two minutes.
- Walk me through how a $10 increase in depreciation flows through the three statements at a 40% tax rate.
- Why must Enterprise Value be paired with unlevered metrics like EBITDA rather than levered metrics like Net Income?
- What is the fulcrum security in a distressed capital structure, and how do you find it?
Superday
- Why Houlihan Lokey specifically, given that our deal sizes are smaller than the bulge brackets?
- Walk me through the full bridge from Enterprise Value to Equity Value, and why we include capitalized leases and non-controlling interests.
- A company buys $100 of equipment with 100% debt, 10-year straight-line life, 10% interest, 20% tax. Walk me through Year 1 across all three statements.
- Tell me about a time you completed a complex financial assignment under a tight deadline with incomplete information.
- Explain the difference between structural and contractual subordination within a credit stack.
- Where are we in the macroeconomic credit and M&A cycle, and how should Houlihan Lokey position its advisory resources?
Financial Restructuring
- Walk me through a capital structure waterfall and calculate recoveries by tranche under stress.
- What is Debtor-in-Possession (DIP) financing and what gives it super-priority?
- Explain the mechanical difference between a drop-down transaction and an up-tiering exchange.
- What is a Section 363 sale and how does it differ from a traditional M&A process?
- What is a cramdown under the US Bankruptcy Code and what must be met for a court to approve it?
- If you had $100 million to invest across the capital structure of a distressed retailer, where would you deploy it?
Financial and Valuation Advisory
- What is a fairness opinion, and why does a board of directors request one?
- What is Purchase Price Allocation and how do you calculate the resulting goodwill?
- How do you value an illiquid, Level 3 asset that lacks public market trading data?
- Walk me through how an FVA professional justifies adjustments to historical betas and cost of capital.
What Houlihan Lokey looks for
Technical accuracy and structural clarity
The bar is steep, especially in Financial Restructuring. Interviewers test non-standard accounting twists (tax shields, PIK interest, write-downs) to confirm you understand mechanics rather than memorize answers.
Credit and capital-structure fluency
Even Corporate Finance interviews lean debt-heavy: leverage ratios, interest coverage, bank debt vs high-yield, and absolute-priority recovery waterfalls.
Humility and practicality
The firm explicitly avoids entitlement. It prizes people ready to put their heads down, execute high-volume data requests accurately, and work in small, intense teams.
Composure under pressure
Interviewers push back on correct answers on purpose. Staying calm, reasoning out loud and accepting guidance beats defensiveness or guessing.
Academic capability
A cumulative GPA of 3.5+ is generally expected; 3.2-3.5 needs exceptional leadership or networking advocates. Non-business majors must prove quantitative comfort.
Genuine, specific motivation
Generic bulge-bracket scripts fail. They want candidates who know the pure-advisory model, the middle-market dominance and the world-leading restructuring franchise.
The edge: what separates offers from rejections
Specific moves most applicants skip. None of them need talent, only preparation.
- 01Reference specific recent deals (Yellow, Rite Aid, Invitae, Lumen, the Intrepid acquisition) to prove genuine research
- 02Know credit and capital-structure basics cold (senior secured vs mezzanine vs equity, fulcrum security, absolute priority) even for M&A
- 03Master the tax-shield math and three-statement links so non-standard twists do not break your logic
- 04Show humility and the airport test: be someone analysts want next to them in the bullpen at 2am
- 05Tailor questions to each interviewer's rank, from staffing models with analysts to cycle positioning with MDs
Prep, stage by stage
Drill each Houlihan Lokey round
Dedicated pages for the four rounds Houlihan Lokey runs. Practise each one free on Intervyo.
Pay & culture
Working at Houlihan Lokey
What they pay
Graduate
~$105,000-110,000 base (~$178,000-215,000 total first-year comp)
Internship
Summer Analyst pay annualized in line with the first-year analyst base (~$105,000-110,000)
Perks
| Company | Comp | Hours / week | Exit options |
|---|---|---|---|
| Evercore | $120,000+ base | 80-95+/week | Very strong (PE, HF) |
| PJT Partners | $120,000+ base | 80-95+/week | Very strong (PE, special situations) |
| Lazard | ~$110-120K base | 80-90/week | Very strong (PE, special situations) |
| Jefferies | ~$100-110K base | 70-85/week | Strong |
| William Blair | $100,000-105,000 base | 70-80/week | Strong (MM PE) |
What working at Houlihan Lokey is like
- Pure-play independent advisory: mandates won on advice, not balance-sheet lending
- World #1 in financial restructuring; #1 adviser on US M&A under $1 billion
- Practical, execution-first, down-to-earth culture distinct from the bulge brackets
- Lean teams and early responsibility; juniors present model outputs early
- Counter-cyclical strength: restructuring revenue buffers M&A slowdowns
- Strict five-day in-office policy for analysts and associates
- Annual performance bucketing (Top/Middle/Bottom); bottom 10-20% face PIPs
- Broad, meritocratic recruiting pool well beyond the usual targets
Timeline
When Houlihan Lokey programmes open and close
By programme. Use these dates to plan applications across the cycle and submit early on rolling lines.
| Programme | Opens | Closes | Assessment | Offers | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| First-Year Diversity / Spring Insight | Sep-Nov of freshman year | Jan-Feb of freshman year | Feb-Mar | Mar-Apr of freshman year | Multi-day educational seminar in NY or LA; high performers fast-tracked to summer-analyst first rounds. |
| Sophomore Internship (Accelerated Tracks) | Dec of freshman year through Feb of sophomore year | Late Feb-Mar of sophomore year | Superdays Mar-Apr of sophomore year | Rolling through April | Direct pipeline into the main junior summer-analyst class. |
| Summer Analyst (Junior Summer, Primary Path) | Jan-Mar of sophomore year | Rolling; pipelines often close by May-June | Superdays Mar-June of sophomore year | Rolling, within hours of Superdays | Opens nearly 15 months before the internship; full-time return offers issued before Labor Day after the junior summer. |
| Full-Time Analyst (Direct Hire / Lateral) | Jun-Jul of junior year | Aug-Sep of senior year | Superdays late Aug through Sep | Sep-Oct of senior year | Mostly former interns, laterals and accelerated fills. |
FAQ
Houlihan Lokey application questions
How is Houlihan Lokey different from a bulge bracket in the US?
It is a pure-play independent advisory bank: it does not lend or trade for its own book, so it competes on advice and technical execution rather than financing, which keeps it free of lending conflicts. It is the undisputed global leader in financial restructuring and the No. 1 adviser on US M&A under $1 billion. The trade-off versus a bulge bracket is that it rarely leads $20+ billion mega-deals and base pay can trail the absolute top boutiques in hot M&A markets. In return, analysts get high deal velocity, lean teams, early client exposure, and a counter-cyclical platform where restructuring revenue buffers M&A slowdowns.
How technical is the Houlihan Lokey interview?
Very, and it skews debt-heavy even in Corporate Finance because the firm houses the world's leading restructuring practice. Expect three-statement links with non-standard twists (tax shields, PIK interest, write-downs), EV-to-equity bridges, LBO drivers, leverage and interest-coverage ratios, and bank debt vs high-yield. Restructuring interviews go much further: recovery waterfalls under absolute priority, the fulcrum security, DIP financing, the automatic stay, cramdown, Section 363 sales and liability management (drop-downs and up-tiering). You will also frequently face an FVA-led round testing ASC 820 fair value, impairment and Purchase Price Allocation. Interviewers test understanding, not memorization, and push back to see how you handle pressure.
What is the Suited online assessment and how do I prepare?
Suited is an AI-driven predictive screening platform built for banking recruiting. It pairs a fast, timed cognitive section (numerical agility and abstract/inductive logic, typically about 15 minutes) with a behavioral and essential-competencies profile, scored on a norm-referenced percentile basis against the firm's benchmark rather than a fixed pass mark. Prepare by drilling rapid mental math and estimation, practicing matrix and non-verbal logic, and taking timed speed drills; plan 10-15 hours over the week before. Answer behavioral prompts intuitively and consistently around ownership, attention to detail and coachability. Note single-profile persistence: a Suited score from another bank this cycle (such as William Blair or Lazard) auto-links to your application, so protect your first attempt.
When does Houlihan Lokey US recruiting open?
On-cycle and accelerated. The primary junior summer-analyst window opens January-March of sophomore year for an internship nearly 15 months later, and core pipelines often close by May or June as cohorts fill. First-year diversity and Spring Insight programs run earlier (applications Sep-Nov of freshman year, offers Mar-Apr), and Superdays for the main cycle run March through June of sophomore year on a rolling basis. Full-time direct hiring opens June-July of junior year and concludes around September-October of senior year. Because review is rolling, apply in the first week and, for non-targets, network early to secure a referral.
What are exit opportunities from Houlihan Lokey?
Excellent and divergent by group. Corporate Finance analysts move into middle-market and upper-middle-market private equity that targets the $200M-$2B EV deals they advised, plus corporate development at major tech and industrial firms. Financial Restructuring alumni are among the most heavily recruited on the Street by elite distressed debt and special-situations funds (Oaktree, Silver Point, Centerbridge, Anchorage, Ares Credit, Brigade) and credit pods at Citadel, Millennium and Point72; these seats often run deeper off-cycle processes with multi-day take-home modeling tests rather than the rushed 48-hour on-cycle window. FVA alumni move into PE portfolio valuation and internal corporate finance. Strong full-program completers also place into M7 business schools.
How not to fail
Mistakes that cost candidates Houlihan Lokey offers
Specific failure modes the firm screens out. None of these need talent to avoid, only awareness.
- 01Failing fundamental accounting logic. Getting stuck tracing a $10 depreciation expense or an inventory write-down through all three statements, or missing the tax shield entirely.
- 02Generic "Why Houlihan Lokey?". Giving an answer that could apply to any bank rather than citing the pure-advisory model, middle-market dominance or restructuring leadership.
- 03Projecting arrogance. An entitled attitude or failing the airport test. The firm prizes humility, practical execution and being someone analysts want next to them at 2am.
- 04Neglecting credit and capital-structure basics. Assuming you only need standard M&A valuation while being unable to rank senior secured, mezzanine and common equity or apply absolute priority.
- 05Losing composure under pressure. Getting flustered or giving up on an unfamiliar technical curveball, or getting defensive when an interviewer pushes back on a correct answer.
- 06No geography-specific focus. Applying to Houston or Chicago without a clear, logical reason for wanting to live and work in that specific city long-term.
If you are rejected
What to do next
Handle a rejection professionally: send a brief, polite thank-you note and ask for any feedback. Houlihan Lokey enforces a strict one-application-per-cycle cooling-off policy, so you must wait until the next academic recruiting cycle to reapply. Use the time to build a strong junior summer internship at a boutique, corporate development group or credit fund, then reapply for full-time during the accelerated senior fall window.
Middle-market competitors
William Blair, Piper Sandler, Stifel, Lincoln International and Baird recruit similar profiles.
Restructuring and boutique peers
Moelis, Lazard, PJT Partners, Jefferies and Rothschild & Co for those drawn to distressed work.
Elite large-cap boutiques
Evercore and Centerview for a large-cap M&A platform.
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Intervyo is not affiliated with or endorsed by Houlihan Lokey. Process details are sourced from past applicants, the firm's published guidance and our own research; verify timings on the firm's official careers site before applying. Last updated July 2, 2026.
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