When McKinsey Comes to Town Quotes

“One former McKinsey consultant wrote anonymously, ¨To those convinced that a secretive cabal controls the world, the usual suspect are Illuminati, Lizard People, or ´globalists.' They are wrong, naturally. There is no secret society shaping every major decision and determining the direction of human history. There is, however, McKinsey & Company.”
― Walt Bogdanich, When McKinsey Comes to Town

“Britain could become the first country in modern history to transition from a developed nation to an underdeveloped one.”
― Walt Bogdanich, When McKinsey Comes to Town: The Hidden Influence of the World's Most Powerful Consulting Firm

“tickets. Patients just didn’t have the information to intelligently price health-care services, and more often than not their priority was getting the best care as soon as possible, not finding the cheapest oncologist.”
― Walt Bogdanich, When McKinsey Comes to Town: The Hidden Influence of the World's Most Powerful Consulting Firm

“McKinsey was telling Allstate to essentially declare war on a sizable proportion of its policyholders. One slide proclaimed, “Winning will be a zero sum game.” In other words, Allstate’s gains come at the expense of its policyholders. Another featured an image of an alligator. Why? Because, like an alligator, Allstate would just “sit and wait” for its victim—the claimant—to give up. “The money came from the only place it could come from—the pockets of Allstate policyholders and claimants,” Berardinelli wrote.”
― Walt Bogdanich, When McKinsey Comes to Town: The Hidden Influence of the World's Most Powerful Consulting Firm

“Cigarette companies, despite their reputation, were attractive clients for one reason: they had mountains of cash. As the investor Warren Buffett once said, “I’ll tell you why I like the cigarette business. It costs a penny to make. Sell it for a dollar. It’s addictive. And there’s fantastic brand loyalty.” Like so many chain-smokers, McKinsey could not resist the lure of cigarettes. The profits were too addictive.”
― Walt Bogdanich, When McKinsey Comes to Town: The Hidden Influence of the World's Most Powerful Consulting Firm

“McKinsey possesses the expertise and influence to make good on its promise of a more rational, value-based health-care system. And it has achieved a modicum of success in reaching that goal. But making a difference by improving patient health is not its raison d’être. McKinsey is, after all, a for-profit company, and profits it has achieved, sometimes honorably and sometimes not, for itself and for its clients. By that measure, McKinsey is an unqualified success, if not a profile in courage.”
― Walt Bogdanich, When McKinsey Comes to Town: The Hidden Influence of the World's Most Powerful Consulting Firm

“Stop using legality as the barometer for ethicality." On this, he was particularly biting, adding a parenthetical phrase: "If we helped southern states 'improve agriculture asset yield' in the 1850s would we stand behind that?”
― Walt Bogdanich, When McKinsey Comes to Town

“Gary rented the locations to crews filming postapocalyptic and horror movies, including A Nightmare on Elm Street and Transformers.”
― Walt Bogdanich, When McKinsey Comes to Town: The Hidden Influence of the World's Most Powerful Consulting Firm

“John J. Lawler, who taught in the University of Illinois’s School of Employment and Labor Relations, believes management consultants mainly serve to legitimize the goals of their clients. “Clients like to be told they are doing the right thing,” Lawler said, adding that management techniques viewed as best practices “are very often propagated by consulting firms and thus these techniques become largely institutionalized in the business world.”
― Walt Bogdanich, When McKinsey Comes to Town: The Hidden Influence of the World's Most Powerful Consulting Firm

“Number three on the historic polluter list, Chevron, one of McKinsey’s biggest clients, generated at least $50 million in consulting fees in 2019. Saudi Aramco, number one on the list, has been a McKinsey client since at least the 1970s.”
― Walt Bogdanich, When McKinsey Comes to Town: The Hidden Influence of the World's Most Powerful Consulting Firm

“With government investigators circling, Purdue needed a counterweight, someone important enough to give it cover. That someone turned out to be the former New York City mayor, Rudy Giuliani. “We believe that government officials are more comfortable knowing that Giuliani is advising Purdue Pharma,” one senior Purdue official said.”
― Walt Bogdanich, When McKinsey Comes to Town: The Hidden Influence of the World's Most Powerful Consulting Firm

“One way to introduce market forces was for private companies to buy NHS hospitals, particularly underperforming ones. Dalton, the British health official who was the focus of intense McKinsey politicking, met with McKinsey consultants on December 17, 2010 to sort through their options. They had a prospective buyer in mind - Helios - a private German hospital chain. Internal records showed that the parent company of Helios had been a McKinsey client in recent years.

By the time lawmakers and bureaucrats began to consider the new NHS law, consultants were deeply embedded in Britain’s government. In 2010 the NHS alone spent £313 million on management consultants.”
― Walt Bogdanich, When McKinsey Comes to Town

“Nick Seddon, a top official in the right wing think tank Reform, who would soon join Cameron's government as an adviser, recommended that the NHS reduce staffing by 150,000, eliminate up to 32,000 hospital beds, and reduce discretionary procedures "such as coronary bypass and mastectomy."

Writing in The Guardian, Seddon said McKinsey had found that these measures, among others, could lead to annual savings to over £20 billion in 2014-2015.”
― Walt Bogdanich, When McKinsey Comes to Town

“In reality, competition didn't work well in a hospital setting. That wasn't a secret: one of the most praised economists of the twentieth century, Kenneth Arrow, had concluded decades earlier that the magic of markets didn't function for health care in the way it would for selling bread, cars, or plane tickets. Patients just didn't have the information to intelligently price health-care services, and more often than not their priority was getting the best care as soon as possible, not finding the cheapest oncologist.”
― Walt Bogdanich, When McKinsey Comes to Town

“But for some industries, especially those that were essentially public utilities, privatization backfired, leading to costs far in excess of what they had been under national control. One notable disaster was British Rail, the country's railroad system privatized under Thatcher's successor, John Major...

On October 17, 2000, a passenger train derailed on that line near the town of Hatfield, killing four people and injuring more than seventy. A government investigation found the track riddled with cracks, undermining its structural integrity. The report blamed Railtrack for failing to property maintain it, with several contemporaneous reports citing McKinsey's Project Destiny. Railtrack was soon renationalized.”
― Walt Bogdanich, When McKinsey Comes to Town

“The U.K., widely regarded as the "sick man of Europe," lagged behind most other European countries economically. A respected columnist speculated that Britain could become the first country in modern history to transition from a developed nation to an underdeveloped one. In 1979, voters chose a radical break, ushering into office a fervent disciple of free-market economics: Margaret Thatcher.”
― Walt Bogdanich, When McKinsey Comes to Town