Like many other major corporations, including our competitors, we seek to navigate a changing geopolitical environment, but we do not support or engage in political activities.
The local Partners who led this work were committed to the cause of reform; yet when it became clear that the country’s President would not follow through on his stated reform agenda, we made the tough decision to walk away and end our service.
Wait, WHAT?!? So who's confused - me or McKinsey? One of us seriously doesn't know what "political activities" means.
I agree with a lot of things in this article, but I also disagree with some. One of the most upsetting parts is the company's retreat. The utter cultural appropriation and nearby humanitarian crisis makes me sick. Ms. Jones' comments about how these consultants don't speak truth to power and might even reduce domestic reform also strike me as true.
I don't understand what McKinsey did wrong in Ukraine. The firm created an economic plan for Yanukovych that helped him get elected, but he became crazy corrupt after McKinsey completed its work. And Poroshenko actively supported the protests against Yanukovych, so why is it bad for him to "praise McKinsey"? Akhmetov also broke ties with Yanukovych during the protests.
I also don't understand the part about China. Ping An hired McKinsey. McKinsey hired Liu Chunhang, whose father-in-law made an absurd amount of money from the Ping An IPO, but who never worked for Chinese clients. Am I missing something? What's the accusation here?
In the last few years, people have become more and more concerned about tech and telecom companies doing confidential work for the US military and CIA. For good reason: "Beware the military industrial complex" as we learned in high school.
Now, here we have a company that's RAKING it in at unprecedented levels with clients like these: (1) Saudi Arabia’s absolute monarchy (2) Turkey under the autocratic leadership of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and (3) corruption-plagued governments in countries like South Africa.
It's like the military-industrial complex ON CRACK, going around and forming little military-industrial complexes with all the worst evil characters all around the planet.
What did you think about the Belt and Road Initiative in Malaysia? That seems like such an obvious conflict with McKinsey playing both sides of the deal. And the result is that some McKinsey people got rich(er) and a bunch of jungle was destroyed and abandoned.
re: Mr liu, I guess it just comes down to whether or not you believe this:
"Any suggestion that Mr. Liu was hired or employed for improper purpose is false and extremely misleading," the company said.
And this:
"Our firm’s rigorous internal policies and procedures” ensure that “we bring an independent perspective” to help each client “pursue its own strategic goals,” McKinsey said.
Perhaps they should say this: "We derive a specific competitive advantage from the fact that we are McKinsey and we work with literally everyone. And since we have no qualms about working with the worst of the worst, we always get an excellent deal for ourselves."
Before reading this, I saw and felt (and smelled) it in print. It’s the front page headline in today’s Sunday NYtimes, along with that epic (dystopian!!) landscape shot of the desert. This article reads like one of the hypotrochoids I used to draw with a Spirograph as a kid. It bounces from Ukraine to China, all over Europe and the Middle East, HBS (because of course) and a parade of greedy and powerful scumbags (even a Jared Kushner cameo!) of such epic magnitude it’s hard to imagine how some of these people exist... and at the center of the molecule, the ultimate evil around which everything gravitates: McKinsey.
WOW. McKinsey put out a statement (source: https://www.mckinsey.com/about-us/media-center/statement-on-new-york-times-article) which, astoundingly, includes these two sentences practically side by side:
Wait, WHAT?!? So who's confused - me or McKinsey? One of us seriously doesn't know what "political activities" means.
I agree with a lot of things in this article, but I also disagree with some. One of the most upsetting parts is the company's retreat. The utter cultural appropriation and nearby humanitarian crisis makes me sick. Ms. Jones' comments about how these consultants don't speak truth to power and might even reduce domestic reform also strike me as true.
I don't understand what McKinsey did wrong in Ukraine. The firm created an economic plan for Yanukovych that helped him get elected, but he became crazy corrupt after McKinsey completed its work. And Poroshenko actively supported the protests against Yanukovych, so why is it bad for him to "praise McKinsey"? Akhmetov also broke ties with Yanukovych during the protests.
I also don't understand the part about China. Ping An hired McKinsey. McKinsey hired Liu Chunhang, whose father-in-law made an absurd amount of money from the Ping An IPO, but who never worked for Chinese clients. Am I missing something? What's the accusation here?
In the last few years, people have become more and more concerned about tech and telecom companies doing confidential work for the US military and CIA. For good reason: "Beware the military industrial complex" as we learned in high school.
Now, here we have a company that's RAKING it in at unprecedented levels with clients like these: (1) Saudi Arabia’s absolute monarchy (2) Turkey under the autocratic leadership of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and (3) corruption-plagued governments in countries like South Africa.
It's like the military-industrial complex ON CRACK, going around and forming little military-industrial complexes with all the worst evil characters all around the planet.
What did you think about the Belt and Road Initiative in Malaysia? That seems like such an obvious conflict with McKinsey playing both sides of the deal. And the result is that some McKinsey people got rich(er) and a bunch of jungle was destroyed and abandoned.
re: Mr liu, I guess it just comes down to whether or not you believe this:
And this:
Perhaps they should say this: "We derive a specific competitive advantage from the fact that we are McKinsey and we work with literally everyone. And since we have no qualms about working with the worst of the worst, we always get an excellent deal for ourselves."
Before reading this, I saw and felt (and smelled) it in print. It’s the front page headline in today’s Sunday NYtimes, along with that epic (dystopian!!) landscape shot of the desert. This article reads like one of the hypotrochoids I used to draw with a Spirograph as a kid. It bounces from Ukraine to China, all over Europe and the Middle East, HBS (because of course) and a parade of greedy and powerful scumbags (even a Jared Kushner cameo!) of such epic magnitude it’s hard to imagine how some of these people exist... and at the center of the molecule, the ultimate evil around which everything gravitates: McKinsey.
And Ping An, which is also just McKinsey.
More and more I think that greed creates poverty.