"When McKinsey Comes to Town"
Bribe, Swindle or Steal
Alexandra Addison-Wrage of TRACE International
4.9 • 582 Ratings
🗓️ 27 December 2023
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Michael Forsythe, co-author with Walt Bogdanich of "When McKinsey Comes to Town", joins the podcast to talk about McKinsey's work in support of autocratic regimes, its rampant conflicts of interest and the distance between its stated values and its work on the ground.
This episode originally aired on January 18, 2023.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome back to the podcast, bribe, swindle, or steel. I'm Alexandra Ragi. Today we're talking about a great and provocative book that came out very recently when McKinsey comes to town, the hidden influence of the world's most powerful consulting firm. |
| 0:20.6 | Written by Walt Bogdanich and Michael Forsyth, |
| 0:23.5 | the book dives into the many ways that McKinsey has facilitated a culture of corruption |
| 0:27.4 | and given a boost to autocratic regimes in the countries where it operates. |
| 0:31.7 | It's a very lively but disturbing read. |
| 0:34.7 | In addition to his work on this book, Michael Forsyth is a reporter on the |
| 0:38.1 | investigations team at the New York Times. Welcome, Michael. Good to be here, Alexandra. |
| 0:43.1 | I'm not overstating this. It's a disturbing book to read. Are you surprised by the response |
| 0:48.3 | the book has received? Pleasantly surprised. It's great that so many people are reading it. |
| 0:53.0 | What's most surprising, I guess, to me, |
| 0:55.4 | although I guess not so surprising when you think about it, is how quiet McKinsey's been about it, |
| 0:59.5 | other than a statement that came out the day it was published, saying, well, this book doesn't really |
| 1:04.4 | represent who we are. The firm has been quite silent about the book, even though obviously the book |
| 1:09.1 | is quite critical of a lot of its work. |
| 1:11.7 | I wonder if you think McKinsey is unique amongst international consulting organizations. |
| 1:19.8 | The title obviously refers to it as the most powerful consulting firm. |
| 1:23.7 | But in some of the stories that we're going to cover in just a minute, do you think its role is unique or fairly typical? |
| 1:30.7 | It's typical in the sense that other consulting firms have also gotten into trouble and been involved in working with nefarious regimes or getting caught up in corruption scandals. |
| 1:40.8 | That's true. Why we focused on McKinsey, though, is because they're really the gold standard. |
| 1:46.5 | They're the biggest of the elite management consulting firms by far. They're competitors being |
| 1:51.8 | Boston Consulting Group and Bain. Pretty much, they're the MBB firms. And so McKinsey's the leader. |
| 1:57.7 | Maybe perhaps you could say they set the example or lead by example, |
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