A simulated M&A deal, run from a Paris boutique. We're a non-profit built by students, for students — giving curious, ambitious applicants a real head start in finance, free of charge. Work a fictional mandate from kickoff to pitch — DCF, buyer memo, pitch deck, client call — and leave with a portfolio you can show on applications.
Sarah Chen runs the TechNova mandate. She's about to email you two small tasks before kickoff — the same kind of thing a first-year gets handed at 09:00. No account, no login. Just do the work.
You work a fictional M&A mandate for TechNova, a mid-sized French SaaS company. Emails arrive from your VP. Deliverables have deadlines. The AI grader reads your work against the same rubric Meridian Partners uses internally.
Welcome email from Sarah Chen, VP. Data room drops. You skim the CIM, read the cap table, then write a one-page company profile — positioning, financials, why it's being sold. AI grades against rubric, returns notes the same day.
Half-filled Excel template lands in your inbox — financials, operating assumptions, a WACC scaffold. Your job: finish the DCF, build the comparable companies set, triangulate. Supporting video walkthrough if you're stuck.
Memo on three potential buyers — one strategic, one PE sponsor, one competitor. You rank them on strategic fit, financial capacity, and close probability. Defend your top pick in two paragraphs.
Six slides in Google Slides recommending a buyer to TechNova's CEO. Not a course on deck design — a recommendation with defendable logic, clean exhibits, and no slide-filler. Your VP has seen a thousand of these. Yours needs to stand up.
Pre-recorded client call with the CEO. She pushes back on your valuation and your buyer ranking. You respond in writing, then synthesize the week into a final memo. You get a personalized AI debrief: strengths, gaps, whether IB is likely to fit.
At the end of the week, Sarah — the mentor who ran your desk — writes you a personal debrief from your actual graded work: what held up, what didn't, and an honest read on whether the pace and the pressure suit you. No score, no trophy.
“The teaser oversold in one line your own numbers didn't back up — and the memo two days later didn't repeat the mistake.”
Your teaser, valuation, buyer memo, board update, and Friday response — plus the per-criterion feedback on each — collected on your portfolio page inside the desk. Something you can walk an interviewer through, not a file you download.
An in-app completion certificate — your name, the mandate, the cohort — issued the moment you finish. No public verification link and no numeric score; it's a marker you can screenshot and reference, not a file to attach.
We're students building Meridian Desk, a non-profit with one goal: give curious, ambitious students a real head start in finance. The deal scenarios, rubrics, and email scripts are drafted with input from people working in finance, and reviewed as we go.
Leave your details and we'll confirm your seat by email straight away. Cohort 05 runs 5–9 October; registration closes Friday 2 October at 23:00 Paris time — no fee, ever.