Current Events > More scrutiny being given to Pete Buttigieg's time at McKinsey

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/05/us/politics/pete-buttigieg-mckinsey.html

Mr. Buttigiegs time at the worlds most prestigious management-consulting company is one piece of his meticulously programmed biography that he mentions barely, if at all, on the campaign trail.

As Mr. Buttigieg explains it, that is not a matter of choice. For all of his efforts to run an open, accessible campaign marked by frequent on-the-record conversations with reporters on his blue-and-yellow barnstorming bus McKinsey is a famously secretive employer, and Mr. Buttigieg says he signed a nondisclosure agreement that keeps him from going into detail about his work there.

But as he gains ground in polls, his reticence about McKinsey is being tested, including by his rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination. Senator Warren, responding last month to needling by Mr. Buttigieg that she release more than the 11 years of tax returns she already had to account for her private-sector work, retorted, There are some candidates who want to distract from the fact that they have not released the names of their clients and have not released the names of their bundlers.

(On Friday night, after this article was published, Mr. Buttigiegs campaign released more information about his McKinsey years, describing his projects in general terms without naming the clients. His assignments, it said, included work for a nonprofit health insurer in Michigan in 2007, a California environmental nonprofit in 2009 and, the following year, a logistics and shipping provider in Washington.

Speaking in Waterloo, Iowa, that evening, Mr. Buttigieg reiterated his request for McKinsey to release him from the nondisclosure agreement. Its not like I was the C.E.O. I was making a lot of spreadsheets and PowerPoints but people want to know from somebody who proposes to be the president of the United States, whats in your past, he said.)

Beyond Mr. Buttigiegs agreement with McKinsey, this is something of an awkward moment to be associated with the consultancy, especially if you happen to be a Democratic politician in an election year shadowed by questions of corporate power and growing wealth inequality. The firm has long advocated business strategies like raising executive compensation, moving labor offshore and laying off workers to cut costs. And over the last couple of years, reporting in The New York Times and other publications has revealed episodes tarnishing McKinseys once-sterling reputation: its work advising Purdue Pharma on how to turbocharge opioid sales, its consulting for authoritarian governments in places like China and Saudi Arabia, and its role in a wide-ranging corruption scandal in South Africa. (All of these came after Mr. Buttigieg left the firm.)

Just this week, ProPublica, copublishing with The Times, revealed that McKinsey consultants had recommended in 2017 that Immigration and Customs Enforcement cut its spending on food for migrants and medical care for detainees.

After a campaign event on Wednesday in Birmingham, Ala., Mr. Buttigieg remarked on the latest revelations. The decision to do what was reported yesterday in The Times is disgusting, he said. And as somebody who left the firm a decade ago, seeing what certain people in that firm have decided to do is extremely frustrating and extremely disappointing.

Mr. Buttigieg was recruited by McKinsey at Oxford. The company seeks out Rhodes scholars like him, banking that their intellects will make up for their lack of M.B.A.s from traditional recruiting grounds like Harvard Business School.

Yet even during the recruitment process, Mr. Helbling recalled, Mr. Buttigieg made it known that, like many applicants, he saw the business experience on offer at McKinsey as a good job in the near term, in his case an asset on the way to a career in public service.

https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2019-12-06/pete-buttigieg-details-mckinsey-consulting-work

Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Ind., released new details on Friday about his confidential work with McKinsey & Co. a decade ago at the same time he escalated calls for the consulting firm to release him from a nondisclosure agreement.

Buttigieg, who is seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, faced repeated questions from voters and the media this week about what he did for McKinsey between 2007 and 2010. McKinsey has received increasing criticism from the public for its past work with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, authoritarian governments and opioid manufacturers.

The newly released details dont include the names of Buttigiegs clients but are the most detailed accounting yet of how he spent his time with McKinsey, which consults for companies and governments around the world.

In 2007, according to Buttigiegs campaign, Buttigiegs first project for McKinsey as an associate involved working for a nonprofit health insurance provider for three months, undertaking on-the-job training and performing analytical work as part of a team identifying savings in administration and overhead costs.

In 2008, Buttigieg spent six months in the Toronto area for a grocery and retail chain, analyzing the effects of price cuts on various combinations of items across their hundreds of stores.

That same year, Buttigieg briefly worked in Chicago for a division of a consumer goods retail chain on a project to investigate opportunities for selling more energy-efficient home products in their stores. He then took time off to volunteer full time for a Democratic campaign for governor in Indiana.

Between 2008 and 2009, Buttigieg worked mostly in Connecticut to help produce a report called Unlocking Energy Efficiency in the U.S. Economy on behalf of the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Energy, the Natural Resources Defense Council and other nonprofit environmental groups and several utility companies.

In 2009, Buttigieg consulted mostly in California for an environmental nonprofit group on a study to research opportunities in energy efficiency and renewable energy.

That same year, he was stationed in Washington and made visits to Iraq and Afghanistan to serve a U.S. government department in a project focused on increasing employment and entrepreneurship in those countries economies.

Between 2009 and 2010 in Washington, Buttigieg served a logistics and shipping provider working to identify and analyze potential new sources of revenue as his final assignment for McKinsey.

Buttigieg said this was the complete list of his cli

Dude is a Republican

---

Leftist purity politics at it again.
---

Antifar posted...

In 2008, Buttigieg spent six months in the Toronto area for a grocery and retail chain, analyzing the effects of price cuts on various combinations of items across their hundreds of stores.

100% chance this is Loblaw. They've worked with McKinsey on a TON of stuff.

Antifar posted...

That same year, Buttigieg briefly worked in Chicago for a division of a consumer goods retail chain on a project to investigate opportunities for selling more energy-efficient home products in their stores."

For sure this is Sears.
---

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/15/world/asia/mckinsey-china-russia.html
https://www.moneylife.in/article/the-country-that-exiled-mckinsey/57176.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/03/us/mckinsey-ICE-immigration.html
I mean, McKinsey does a ton of stuff, so it's plausible that Mayor Pete wasn't involved in anything particularly shady. I mean, other than McKinsey & Co.

But then: https://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/31/opinion/31iht-edmyers.1.14914273.html
Who goes to Somaliland to chill and then just happens to write an Op-Ed in the New York Times advocating for a change in U.S. policy towards Somaliland? Just, you know, out of the blue.

McKinsey sounds evil as fuck

More corptocracy is not what America needs
---

https://twitter.com/CANCEL_SAM/status/1203164326389002240

lot going on here
---

lilORANG posted...

Leftist purity politics at it again.

Yeah how dare leftists demand integrity and transparency from their candidates.

---

ScazarMeltex posted...

Yeah how dare leftists demand integrity and transparency from their candidates.

That's not what this is lol. You've gota people calling him a Republican because he worked in the private sector. It's ridiculous.
---