1) What were some of the causes of the turmoil in the financial markets over the past eighteen months?
2) How were those causes related to changes in the investment banking industry and, in the financial services sector more generally, in recent decades?
3) What is the basic principle underlying the federal securities laws in the U.S. How is the Sarbanes-Oxley Act quite different from the other major U.S. securities laws?
4) What are some of the challenges facing financial regulators, especially given the globalization of financial services?

What exactly it is that we mean by "private equity"?
What are some of the different categories under that broad heading?
And why have specialized intermediaries developed for this type of capital raising? What is it that they do?
And what are the roles for investment banks within this market?

Exactly what do we mean by a "hedge fund"?
What are some of the ways in which a hedge fund differs from a typical mutual fund?
What are the key ways in which hedge funds and investment banks interact?
Does it make sense for an investment bank to run a hedge fund?
How might the recent trend toward convergence between some hedge funds and private equity funds affect the business of both?

1) As an investment banker, what kind of a dialog would you have with the CEO or CFO of a private company that was seeking additional capital? What are the key issues that you would want to explore?

2) If you, the investment banker, received an invitation from a company to compete for the mandate to bring the company public, what would you do to prepare? Who would you want to bring to the meeting with the client? What issues would you highlight?

3) Given the nature of the U.S. securities laws and the demands of investors, what kinds of tensions might arise between you, the banker, and your client as you went through the process of getting the client company ready for an IPO?

4) How would you value an IPO in an industry that is entirely new, such as the internet was a decade ago?

5) What are some of the things that an investment banker must do to prepare a company for a "road show"? Why hasn't the internet made road shows obsolete?

(1) How would the Google IPO have differed in significant ways from that of a small, relatively unknown company?
(2) Which aspects of the IPO process are most amenable to being changed by technology, and which ones are not?

Rights offerings are relatively rare in the U.S. but are the norm elsewhere for seasoned equity offerings: how come?

What do the clients want, and who are the most important clients?
From the viewpoint of someone considering "sell-side" equity research as a career, would you say that it is now more or less attractive than it used to be?

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What exactly is the role of the rating agencies in the debt issuance process?
What are some of the debates regarding credit rating agencies these days? How does the job of an analyst at a rating agency differ from that of a sell-side fixed-income analyst?
How similar or dissimilar is the job of the latter to that of a sell-side equity analyst?
Have the recent controversies surrounding both been the same?