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ingspershare will rise, because of the following rule: when a higher P/E pany buys a lower P/E pany, the acquirer39。ve also learned that the eight balls on the scale are normal. Try to use this information. You must be both creative and analytical. Most people who work through this problem consider only weighing a number of balls against each other, and then taking another set and weighing them, etc. This won39。t expect it. Here39。t, ask. If no objectives are proffered, funnel your thinking into three main areas: market share growth, financial performance, and brand identity. GuesstimatesGuesstimates are monly asked in consulting and investment banking interviews. Generally, your interviewer asks you to estimate the number or size of something, and observes your reasoning process. Most interviewers don39。s take a look at a sample guesstimate: 1. How many gallons of white housepaint are sold in the . each year? THE START BIG APPROACH: If you39。ll know that machine 4 is defective. 3. Four members of U2 (Bono, the Edge, Larry and Adam) need to get across a narrow bridge to play a concert. Since it39。t bee flustered. Simply try to think through the question from every angle you can. Most questions require either logic, that everpopular out of the box thinking, or both.1. If you look at a clock and the time is 3:15, what is the angle between the hour and the minute hands?The answer to this is not zero! The hour hand, remember, moves as well. The hour hand moves a quarter of the way between three and four, so it moves a quarter of a twelfth (1/48) of 360 degrees. So the answer is seven and a half degrees, to be exact. 2. A pany has ten machines that produce gold coins. One of the machines is producing coins that are a gram light. How do you tell which machine is making the defective coins with only one weighing?Think this through clearly, every machine will have to produce a sample coin or coins, and you must weigh all these coins together. How can you somehow indicate which coins came from which machine? The best way to do it is to have every machine crank out its number in coins, so that machine 1 will make one coin, machine 2 will make two coins, and so on. Take all the coins, weigh them together, and consider their weight against the total theoretical weight. If you39。s irrelevant to the problem at hand. Make reasonable assumptions, with easytoworkwith numbers, and go from there (remember that you39。S OBJECTIVES: Finally, you must determine your pany39。s proceed with the assBrand Management Case Question: The Brand LaunchWhile Wall Street may control our purse strings, and Hollywood may control our dreams and imaginations, it is the brand managers whose guiding hands shape everything we eat and wear, and in fact, shape the way we think about these things. The most soughtafter brand management positions are with leading consumer products panies such as Procter amp。s obvious, but why? Because if you weigh, say three balls against five, you are not receiving any information. In a problem like this, you are trying to receive as much information as possible with each weighing. For example, one of the first mistakes people make when examining this problem is that they believe the first weighing should involve all of the balls (6 against 6). This weighing involves all of the balls, but what type of information does this give you? It actually gives you no new information. You already know that one of the sides will be heavier, and by weighing 6 against 6, you will simply confirm this knowledge. Still, you want to gain information about as many balls as possible (so weighing 1 against 1 is obviously not a good idea). Thus the best first weighing is 4 against 4. That way, you reserve 4 balls, and can obtain some information about each subset of 4. Secondly, if you think through this problem long enough, you will realize how precious the information gained from a weighing is: You need to transfer virtually every piece of information you have gained from one weighing to the next. Say you weigh 4 against 4, and the scale balances. Lucky you! Now you know that the odd ball is one of the unweighed 4. But don39。s P/E ratio is 30 times earnings. After Company A acquires Company B, will Company A39。 or (2) you take the last year, say year 10, and assume some constant growth rate after that, perhaps 10%. The present value of this growing stream of payments after year 10 is the Terminal Value. Note: To figure out what discount rate you would use to discount the pany39。 What have other panies facing this situation done? s current relationship with its distribution partner. Would that be OK? In this way, you take charge of the line of questioning without stepping on the interviewer39。m a perfectionist. Or: I tend to work too hard. You may want to prepare a more thoughtful answer, but you should at least anticipate this question. 10. If you could go anywhere for 24 hours, with an unlimited budget where would you go?Sometimes, interviewers will ask offthewall questions just to get a better sense of who you are as a person.Questions to Ask During Your Summer Internship Interviews* Can you give me an example of my summer responsibilities? Try to make sure the answer you receive is as specific as possible. Particularly if you39。t market this card, unless we can further cut our marketing costs or increase the price of the card. If we could slice the cost of the envelope attachments a penny or so, or sell the card for $35, or convince our comarketer to reduce our costs, it might be worth selling.Commonlyasked QuestionsCompanies these days look for more than whether you39。s a sample case question: You are advising a credit card pany that wants to market a prepaid phone card to its customers. Is this a good idea? You: What is the role of our pany? Do we simply market the card or must we create them ourselves? Interviewer: This card will be comarketed with an outside p