McKinsey & Company, 2012

In 2012, McKinsey & Company (McKinsey) was the world's premier management consultancy, providing advice to CEO's and top executives of leading companies around the globe. Many consulting firms were bigger but few could match the reputation McKinsey had built over more than half a century or the level of fees that McKinsey consultants could demand for their work. With almost 24,000 alumni working in 120 countries in senior positions in almost every sector of the economy, McKinsey also represented one of the most powerful business networks in existence. Many Fortune 500 CEO's were McKinsey alumni, and the firm had been dubbed by Fortune Magazine "The best CEO launch pad." In 2012, Managing Director Dominic Barton presided over an organization of more than 9,000 consultants generating more than $7 billion a year. As the world stumbled from crisis to crisis, there was no shortage of corporations and institution seeking McKinsey's advice, and Barton continued to meet his personal target of visiting with two CEOs each day.

But Barton was also managing a public relations crisis. In 2010, Anil Kumar, a long time McKinsey partner who built the firm's dotcom practice, pleaded guilty to insider trading and implicated Rajat Gupta, MD of McKinsey from 1994 to 2003. Gupta was subsequently sentenced to two years in Federal prison for insider trading. Barton described this as "incredibly embarrassing and tough to deal with, particularly internally" and he launched a full review of all of the firm's policies. He commented, "From the client point of view we have been very fortunate. We are very grateful, we have a lot of support so there has literally been no impact on that side. But there is no way it cannot affect our brand … I think it will take some time (to repair the damage). I think it's going to be determined by how we respond, the actions we take, and our behaviors moving forward."