When McKinsey Comes to Town
The Hidden Influence of the World's Most Powerful Consulting Firm
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4.5 • 10 Ratings
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- £7.99
Publisher Description
**A TIMES AND NEW YORK TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR 2022**
An explosive exposé of a firm whose work has made your world more unequal, more corrupt and more dangerous.
McKinsey & Company have earned billions consulting for almost every major corporation in the world - and countless governments, including yours. Shielded by NDAs, their practices have remained hidden - until now.
In this propulsive investigation, prize-winning journalists Walt Bogdanich and Michael Forsythe reveal the disturbing reality. McKinsey's work includes ruthless cuts to the NHS, troubleshooting for Big Oil, incentivising the prescription of opioids, executing Trump's immigration policies (the ones that put children in cages) as well as advising some of the world's most unsavoury despots.
'A story of secrecy, delusion and untold harm' OBSERVER
'Makes you so angry...the evidence the authors winkle out is astonishing' SUNDAY TIMES
'Panoramic, meticulously reported and ultimately devastating' PATRICK RADDEN KEEFE
'A harrowing account of decades of dishonourable exploits' ECONOMIST
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
New York Times reporters Bogdanich and Forsythe peel back the layers of secrecy surrounding management consulting firm McKinsey & Co. in this revelatory and often shocking account. Drawing on interviews with "nearly one hundred current and former McKinsey employees," as well as client and billing records, the authors uncover a devastating pattern of harm caused by greed, conflicts of interest, and unethical behavior. The company's "long-standing policy" of advising competing organizations with conflicting interests is a recurrent theme: McKinsey simultaneously advised a Chinese engineering firm responsible for building military bases in contested waters of the South China Sea and the U.S. Defense Department, which is opposed to those incursions, and helped develop Illinois's plan to privatize Medicaid services without disclosing its ties to managed care companies that profited from those changes. The authors also delve into McKinsey's "deeply political" work helping the Saudi Arabian government to "smoke out influential malcontents" on social media; its entanglement with government corruption in South Africa; and its plans to help Purdue Pharma "turbocharge" OxyContin sales and vaping company Juul to avoid FDA regulations while selling millions of its devices to teenagers. Scrupulously documented and fluidly written, this is a jaw-dropping feat of investigative journalism.
