The most prominent of the three elite strategy consultancies, alongside BCG and Bain. McKinsey reckons multinationals are responsible for two-thirds of global exports. The firm turns 100 in 2026. In 1990 the trio had a few thousand staff between them; by 2025 they employed around 90,000. Over the decade to 2025 their combined revenue more than doubled.
Marvin Bower led the firm from 1950 to 1967 and shaped its ethos that services should be "sought, not sold". Ron Daniel ran it from 1976 to 1988 and spoke of an "organisation of genuine greatness" filled with "superior people". Dominic Barton led from 2009 to 2018, making growth the priority; at a partner meeting in Berlin in 2013 he instructed colleagues to "ask for forgiveness, not permission." Kevin Sneader succeeded Barton and introduced new controls to stamp out misbehaviour, but was ousted in 2021. Bob Sternfels, the current leader, promised to "return McKinsey to the partners". Kate Smaje is the firm's technology chief.
McKinsey's revenue in 2024 was a little over $16bn, more than double the figure in 2012. Yet after rapid expansion, revenue growth in 2024 was a meagre 2%. Since the end of 2023 its workforce has shrunk from 45,000 to 40,000. BCG has been gaining ground: McKinsey's revenue in 2012 was more than twice BCG's; by 2024 it was only a fifth larger. BCG's revenue grew by 10% in 2024, five times as fast as McKinsey's. Bain, the smallest of the three, expanded about as quickly as BCG. At current rates BCG is on track to become the strategy trio's top dog by revenue in 2027.
The expansion of the 2010s was fuelled partly by digital work. Between 2013 and 2023 McKinsey acquired at least 16 specialist technology consultancies, gaining the ability to assist clients not only with digital strategy but also with prototyping products and building data tools. This pushed McKinsey into implementation—a segment traditionally dominated by Accenture and the big-four professional-services giants, which charge considerably lower rates. To compete, McKinsey has had to tie fees to project results and hire more specialists and experienced executives rather than generalists.
Throughout the 2010s McKinsey helped opioid manufacturers market their drugs to addicts in America. It also profited from ill-gotten contracts with state-owned companies in South Africa. It has admitted wrongdoing and settled with prosecutors in both cases.
McKinsey alumni run 24 of America's 500 most valuable companies, according to Altrata, a data provider. The figures for Bain and BCG are seven and five respectively. Companies from Alphabet to Coca-Cola, Citigroup and Visa are run by former consultants. Since January 2010 companies run by former consultants from the strategy trio have generated cumulative shareholder returns of 677%, compared with 584% from an industry-matched benchmark. McKinsey alumni outperformed those from BCG and Bain both in absolute terms and relative to their industry mix.
The value of the strategy trio lies chiefly in their experience of similar problems at other clients. Situations a chief executive might encounter only once in a career—such as a big merger or relocating a factory—are rarely unique. Clever graduates are rotated through projects lasting a few weeks to a few months, exposing them to a wide range of business problems, from entering new markets to cutting costs. Most leave after a couple of years of punishing work, with the consultancies often helping them line up their next role.
QuantumBlack, McKinsey's own AI unit, is the crown jewel of its digital practice. McKinsey has fed its corpus of intellectual property into its own bot, Lilli. Fast-growing technology providers such as Palantir—described by analysts at UBS as "McKinsey meets Databricks"—are also helping clients deploy AI systems, embedding engineers with customers and growing revenue at 48% a year. OpenAI has begun offering a consulting-like service to help businesses deploy its models. These competitors could force the traditional consultants to retreat to pure strategic advice. Strategy projects combine deep cogitation with a good deal of grunt work—combing through spreadsheets and preparing PowerPoint slides—much of which AI may soon handle.
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