When McKinsey Comes to Town: The Hidden Influence of the World's Most Powerful Consulting Firm

Description

In When McKinsey Comes to Town, two prizewinning investigative journalists have written a portrait of the company sharply at odds with its public image. Often McKinsey's advice boils down to major cost-cutting, including layoffs and maintenance reductions, to drive up short-term profits, thereby boosting a company's stock price and the wealth of its executives who hire it, at the expense of workers and safety measures. McKinsey collects millions of dollars advising government agencies that also regulate McKinsey's corporate clients. And the firm frequently advises competitors in the same industries, but denies that this presents any conflict of interest. In one telling example, McKinsey advised a Chinese engineering company allied with the communist government which constructed artificial islands, now used as staging grounds for the Chinese Navy—while at the same time taking tens of millions of dollars from the Pentagon, whose chief aim is to counter Chinese aggression. Shielded by NDAs, McKinsey has escaped public scrutiny despite its role in advising tobacco and vaping companies, purveyors of opioids, repressive governments, and oil companies. McKinsey helped insurance companies' boost their profits by making it incredibly difficult for accident victims to get payments; worked its U.S. government contacts to let Wall Street firms evade scrutiny; enabled corruption in developing countries such as South Africa; undermined health-care programs in states across the country. And much more. Bogdanich and Forsythe have penetrated the veil of secrecy surrounding McKinsey by conducting hundreds of interviews, obtaining tens of thousands of revelatory documents, and following rule #1 of investigative reporting: Follow the money. When McKinsey Comes to Town is a landmark work of investigative reporting that amounts to a devastating portrait of a firm whose work has often made the world more unequal, more corrupt, and more dangerous. Cover Title Page Copyright Dedication Contents Introduction: When McKinsey Comes to Town Chapter 1: Wealth Without Guilt: McKinsey's Values Chapter 2: Winners and Losers: The Inequality Machine Chapter 3: Playing Both Sides: Helping Government Help McKinsey Chapter 4: McKinsey at ICE: "We Do Execution, Not Policy" Chapter 5: Befriending China’s Government Chapter 6: Guarding the Gates of Hades: Tobacco and Vaping Chapter 7: Turbocharging Opioid Sales Chapter 8: “Turning a Coal Mine into a Diamond” Chapter 9: Toxic Debt: McKinsey on Wall Street Chapter 10: Allstate’s Secret Slides: "Winning Will Be a Zero-Sum Game" Chapter 11: “The Enron Astros” Chapter 12: “Clubbing Seals”: The South Africa Debacle Chapter 13: Serving the Saudi State Chapter 14: Chumocracy: Half a Century at Britain's NHS Epilogue A Note on Sources Acknowledgments Notes Index