McKinsey & Company

McKinsey & Company, global management consulting firm known for its prestige, high-profile clientele, and controversies. The firm is generally considered one of the top consulting firms internationally and employed about 45,000 people across more than 65 countries in 2023. McKinsey is headquartered in New York City.

McKinsey was established in 1926 by James O. McKinsey, an accounting professor at the University of Chicago. Prior to founding the firm, McKinsey had written several books on accounting and financial management. When McKinsey was first established, the firm’s employees did not refer to themselves as consultants, but rather as “management engineers.” McKinsey passed away a little over a decade later in 1937, and Marvin Bower, who had been hired in 1933 to manage the firm’s new office in New York, took over the New York office and company name.

In 1944 McKinsey established a presence in San Francisco, and in 1952 the firm recommended that the Eisenhower administration create the role of chief of staff. Six years later, the company worked with NASA to define the agency’s organizational structure. McKinsey expanded internationally in 1959, opening an office in London. In 1970 the firm worked with the Uniform Grocery Product Code Council to create the universal product code, a system used to track goods in warehouses and stores.

McKinsey works with nonprofits and public sector clients in addition to for-profit companies. Though the firm is secretive about its thousands of past and present clients, inside sources and public controversies have revealed some of its notable clients, including Purdue Pharma, Juul, Rikers Island, Immigrations and Customs Enforcements (ICE), and the Food and Drug Administration, as well as international clients including China, South Africa, and Saudi Arabia.

During McKinsey alum Pete Buttigieg’s presidential campaign, The New York Times editorial board and presidential contender Elizabeth Warren criticized him for a lack of transparency regarding his time employed at the firm. In response, he released the names of his former clients. The list included companies like Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, Best Buy, and Canadian grocery store chain Loblaws, as well as public sector clients including the U.S. Postal Service, the U.S. Department of Defense, and the Environmental Protection Agency.

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The firm has been embroiled in several controversies throughout its operation. U.S. energy, commodities, and services company Enron was a McKinsey client until it collapsed in 2001 as a result of accounting fraud within the business. Former Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling, who was sentenced to 24 years in jail (but released after just 12 years) for his role in the collapse, was a McKinsey alum. The company also worked with Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin, throughout the opioid crisis. Sales of the drug had been declining, so McKinsey wrote proposals with the goal to “turbocharge” its sales, ultimately making about $86 million for consulting for Purdue. McKinsey has agreed to pay a total of about $1 billion in various settlements and lawsuits concerning their role in the epidemic. In April 2024 The Wall Street Journal announced that McKinsey was under investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice for their work with Purdue and other opioid manufacturers. 

McKinsey was not exempt from government scandal as well. The company proposed that ICE make controversial budget cuts, such as reducing money spent on food and medical care for detained migrants. In 2015 McKinsey revealed which Twitter accounts were most critical of the Saudi Arabian government, leading to the government targeting and arresting the authors behind some of the accounts. The firm also garnered criticism for its work in South Africa, which enmeshed the firm with the inner circle of president Jacob Zuma. The South African branch of the company was ultimately charged with corruption by the country’s government.

In 2022 New York Times reporters Walt Bogdanich and Michael Forsythe released a book titled When McKinsey Comes to Town: The Hidden Influence of the World’s Most Powerful Consulting Firm, which portrayed the company as having outsized power. In response to the book’s release, the company stated:

“A recently published book fundamentally misrepresents our firm and our work. The book also seeks to associate our firm with events—like the 2008 financial crisis, a Major League Baseball cheating scandal, or safety incidents at a theme park—that we simply had nothing to do with.”