(2023-10-23) John Oliver On Management Consulting Firms They Shouldnt Get To Be Invisible

John Oliver on management consulting firms: ‘They shouldn’t get to be invisible’. John Oliver tore into management consulting firms on Sunday’s Last Week Tonight, and in particular the track record of McKinsey.

McKinsey advice is associated with mass layoffs, disguised with euphemisms such as “finding efficiencies” or “organizational streamlining”, and with the expansion of executive pay.

Oliver then started in on McKinsey’s shadowy client list with Purdue Pharma, the makers of OxyContin, which paid McKinsey about $84m in fees to “turbocharge” sales of opioids.

McKinsey also advises public entities, such as New York City, which paid the company $27.5m to help reduce violence at Rikers Island.

McKinsey claimed that it reduced violence by 50% in certain “Restart” facilities, though the company allegedly colluded with jail officials to stack the Restart units with inmates the company believed would not start fights or attack prison staff. McKinsey still denies rigging the experiment, but ProPublica found that violence rose 50% at Rikers overall after the company began its assignment. “You’ve got to hand it McKinsey there. Not many firms could get paid $27m of taxpayer money to leave Rikers somehow even worse,” Oliver joked.

McKinsey consultants also worked for Purdue and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) at the same time, a conflict of interest.

“There’s a big difference between having experience working for both and actively working for both at the same time,” Oliver responded

According to a House oversight committee report, in 2014, McKinsey boasted to Purdue of having an “unequaled capability based on who we know and what we know” including “the FDA, who we have supported for over five years”. “Hold on McKinsey, which is it then?” Oliver exclaimed.

Oliver then pivoted to McKinsey’s “truly terrible clients” abroad, from Russian defense contractors to the government of Saudi Arabia. One internal McKinsey report highlighted three people who publicly criticized the regime on social media. The dissidents were then targeted by the Saudi government.

Oliver was not necessarily against the consulting industry, he concluded, “but if their work, as they claim, really does impact the lives of millions of people, they shouldn’t get to be invisible, and they should expect much more accountability for their mistakes”.