McKinsey & Company

Who owns McKinsey & Company?
The firm's senior partners own it. McKinsey is a private partnership with no external shareholders, no private equity sponsor, and no corporate parent. Partners share profits and elect leadership through internal votes.

Is McKinsey publicly traded?
No, and it cannot be under its current structure. The partnership model means the firm has no stock. It has been private for the whole of its 100-year history.

How much revenue does McKinsey make?
The firm last disclosed $16 billion for 2023 and no longer publishes figures. Industry estimates place revenue in the $15 to 16 billion range through 2025, essentially flat for half a decade.

How many employees does McKinsey have?
Approximately 38,000 as of 2025, down from a peak above 45,000 in 2023. The firm conducted its largest-ever layoffs between 2023 and 2025, concentrated in non-client-facing roles.

Who runs McKinsey?
Bob Sternfels has been global managing partner since 2021, elected by the firm's senior partners. He previously led the firm's North America client operations and its restructuring after the opioid settlements.

What were McKinsey's biggest scandals?
The opioid advisory work for Purdue Pharma, which produced settlements approaching $1.6 billion and a 2024 DOJ deferred prosecution agreement, and the 2012 insider trading conviction of former global managing partner Rajat Gupta.

What does McKinsey actually do?
It advises top management of large organizations on strategy, operations, digital transformation, organization, and analytics. Engagements range from board-level strategy to multi-year implementation programs, priced on value and relationships rather than commodity hours.

James O. McKinsey, a University of Chicago accounting professor, founded the firm in Chicago in 1926 around a then-novel idea: accountants should advise on management, not just report on it. The firm's early work was budgeting and financial control for corporate clients.

Marvin Bower joined in 1933 and, after James McKinsey died in 1937, spent decades turning a solid advisory practice into an institution. Bower imposed professional norms borrowed from law firms: client confidentiality, an up-or-out promotion pyramid, recruit-from-elite-schools hiring, and the principle that the firm advised only top management. He also established the partnership structure that still governs it.

International expansion tracked American corporate growth. London opened in 1959, followed by offices across Europe, Asia, and Latin America. The 1960s and 1970s saw Boston Consulting Group and then Bain emerge as rivals, creating the MBB tier that still defines the strategy market's top end.

The firm's alumni flywheel became self-reinforcing through the late twentieth century: graduates left for executive roles and hired the firm back, embedding McKinsey across the Fortune 500. It expanded from pure strategy into operations, organization, and later digital through McKinsey Digital and acquisitions including advanced-analytics firm QuantumBlack (2015) and design shops like LUNAR and Veryday.

The 2010s and 2020s brought the firm's hardest period. Rajat Gupta, the first global managing partner not from the founding tradition's inner circle, was convicted of insider trading in 2012. The opioid crisis produced the deepest damage: between 2021 and 2024 McKinsey paid settlements approaching $1.6 billion, culminating in a December 2024 Department of Justice resolution including a deferred prosecution agreement over its Purdue Pharma advisory work.

Bob Sternfels became global managing partner in 2021 and has led a reform and restructuring program. Consulting demand slowed after the pandemic boom, revenue plateaued near $16 billion, and the firm cut more than 10 percent of total staff between 2023 and 2025, the deepest reduction in its history, while building out AI capabilities including its internal generative AI platform Lilli.

McKinsey consistently tops brand prestige rankings for consulting, including Vault's consulting rankings where it has held the number one position for most of the list's history. It is routinely among the most selective employers in the world by application-to-offer ratio and places at or near the top of MBA employer rankings.

Its research arm's output, including the Global Institute's reports and the McKinsey Quarterly, is among the most cited business research worldwide, and its recruiting pipeline has produced an unmatched roster of Fortune 500 chief executives.

The opioid affair is the darkest chapter. McKinsey advised Purdue Pharma for over a decade, including work US authorities characterized as helping turbocharge OxyContin sales during the addiction crisis. In 2021 it paid nearly $600 million to resolve claims from US states and territories; in December 2024 it reached a $650 million resolution with the Department of Justice that included a deferred prosecution agreement, and a former senior partner pleaded guilty to obstruction. Total penalties approach $1.6 billion.

The Gupta scandal preceded it. Rajat Gupta, global managing partner from 1994 to 2003, was convicted in 2012 of passing Goldman Sachs board information to Raj Rajaratnam's hedge fund and sentenced to prison. Associate Anil Kumar, who ran key practices, pleaded guilty in the same case.

Other documented matters include the South Africa Eskom affair, where the firm repaid fees and settled over work linked to Gupta-family entities; a $18 million SEC settlement in 2021 over internal controls related to its MIO investment arm; criticism of work for the Saudi, Chinese, and Russian governments; and a 2023-2024 insider trading case involving a former partner. The firm has responded with client-service policy reforms, an independent risk function, and the largest governance overhaul in its history.