When McKinsey Comes to Town

An explosive exposé of the world's most prestigious and successful management consultancy'Panoramic, meticulously reported and ultimately devastating' Patrick Radden Keefe, author of Empire of Pain 'Every page made my blood boil' Joseph E. Stiglitz, Nobel laureate, author of The Price of Inequality McKinsey earns billions advising almost every major corporation as well as countless governments, including Britain's, the USA's and China's. It boasts of its ability to maximise efficiency while making the world a better place. Its millionaire partners and network of alumni go on to top jobs in the world's most powerful organisations. And yet, shielded by non-disclosure agreements, its work remains largely secret - until now. In this propulsive investigation, two prize-winning journalists reveal the reality. McKinsey's work includes incentivising the prescription of opioids; ruthless cost-cutting in the NHS; executing Trump's immigration policies (the ones that put children in cages). Meanwhile its vast profits derive from a client roster that has included the coal, tobacco and vaping industries, as well as some of the world's most unsavoury despots. And for the last six decades, McKinsey has been the brains behind many of the most loathed and controversial business practices: mass lay-offs, outsourcing overseas, soaring executive pay, as well as the key innovations that led to the financial crash. McKinsey proudly insists it is a values-led organisation. When McKinsey Comes to Town is a parable of values betrayed: a devastating portrait of a firm whose work has often made the world more unequal, more corrupt and more dangerous.

Hard-hitting ... damning ... If you think what management consultants do is to dress up common sense in jargon and flog it as vision to credulous executives, you are, according to [Bogdanich and Forsythe], greatly underestimating their impact, A masterful work of investigative journalism ... to unearth conflicts of interest, corruption, hypocrisy and strategic blunders that read like a prosecutor's indictment ... The fact that neither regulators, the public, nor most of McKinsey's employees knew about these sordid episodes ... is a testament to the authors' prowess as investigative reporters ... superb, Deeply reported ... The portrait this book creates is one of a company chasing profits, spreading the gospel of downsizing and offshoring, its leaders virtually unmoored from any guiding principles or moral code ... a clear and devastating picture of the management philosophy that helped drive the decline of a stable ... middle class over the last 50 years', Hypocrisy, avarice, ridiculous PowerPoints, aiding and abetting the world's polluters and drug companies. Every page made my blood boil as I read about McKinsey's flawed reasoning and the vast profits made from ethically dubious work for governments, polluting companies and big pharma, 'A lengthy and damning charge sheet ... makes you so angry you want to chuck rocks at its offices ... the evidence the authors winkle out is astonishing ... What sustains you are the authors' eye for detail and killer quotes. If you want to know why top pay for US executives has risen to a record 350 times that of the average worker, look to McKinsey

Walt Bogdanich (Author) Walt Bogdanich is an investigative reporter for the New York Times and is one of the US's most-honoured journalists. He has been awarded three Pulitzer Prizes and four George Polk Awards for his investigative journalism. He previously produced stories for 60 Minutes, ABC News and the Wall Street Journal in New York and Washington. He has a BA in political science from the University of Wisconsin and a master's degree in journalism from Ohio State University. He lives in Port Washington, NY.Michael Forsythe (Author) Michael Forsythe is an investigative reporter for the New York Times. At Bloomberg he was part of a team that won the George Polk Award in 2013. Forsythe is a veteran of the US Navy. He has a BA in international economics from Georgetown University and a master's degree in East Asian studies from Harvard University. He lives in New York City.