In a few years, the consulting firm McKinsey has experienced a meteoric rise, going from 28,000 employees to 45,000 for a turnover of 15 billion dollars in 2021. Figure which should be exceeded in 2022, according to the Bloomberg agency .
Despite this, the firm founded in 1926 in Chicago and present in 130 countries should, according to the press agency, cut its workforce by eliminating 2,000 jobs worldwide, the most important social plan in its history.
According to the agency, this social plan should primarily target administrative staff. Mc McKinsey wants to rationalize certain costs such as the centralization of support tasks for consultants.
These dismissals also come two years after the change of management of the company. Around this time, McKinsey’s 650 associates chose new boss Bob Sternfels to replace Kevin Sneader, whose tenure was marred by lawsuits in the United States. The firm has been accused of contributing to the opiate crisis through its advice to pharmaceutical companies like Purdue Pharma, the maker of the painkiller OxyContin. To close the case, McKinsey agreed in February 2021 to pay $573 million to settle these lawsuits.
Four searches at the end of January
In France, McKinsey has been singled out. A report by the Senate Committee of Inquiry into the influence of private consulting firms on public policy published on March 16, 2022 had sparked heated controversy over the use of public funds for the benefit of these firms. The opposition then called for an investigation into the possible favoritism which McKinsey would have benefited from from the Macronist majority. According to this report, contracts concluded by the State with consulting firms such as McKinsey had “more than doubled” between 2018 and 2021, reaching a record amount of more than one billion euros in 2021.
McKinsey intervened in most of the major reforms of Emmanuel Macron’s first five-year term (2017-2022), playing a leading role with those around him, according to the 385-page Senate report.
Since then, four searches have been carried out at the end of January in France at the homes of current and former leaders of the consulting firm. In December 2022, it was the French headquarters of the company and those of Emmanuel Macron’s party, Renaissance, and of the Renaissance financing association which had been searched by the investigators.
Since July 29, the government has published rules which now govern the services entrusted to the private sector by the ministries. Most assignments will be capped at 2 million euros and the number of services performed consecutively by the same service provider is limited.