The Big Three or MBB refers to the name colloquially given to the three large strategy

consulting firms A consulting firm or simply consultancy is a professional service firm that provides expertise and specialised labour for a fee, through the use of consultants. Consulting firms may have one employee or thousands; they may consult in a broad range ...

. They are considered to be the most prestigious firms in the

management consulting Management consulting is the practice of providing consulting services to organizations to improve their performance or in any way to assist in achieving organizational objectives. Organizations may draw upon the services of management consultan ...

industry. In terms of employees, McKinsey & Company is the largest and leads by revenue; followed by

Boston Consulting Group Boston Consulting Group, Inc. (BCG) is an American global management consulting firm founded in 1963 and headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts. It is one of the Big Three (or MBB, the world’s three largest management consulting firms by re ...

and

Bain & Company Bain & Company is an American management consulting company headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts. The firm provides advice to public, private, and non-profit organizations. One of the Big Three management consultancies, Bain & Company was fou ...

The firms

The three consulting firms widely regarded as constituting the Big Three or MBB are McKinsey & Company,

and

. These three firms are among the world's largest strategy

revenue In accounting, revenue is the total amount of income generated by the sale of goods and services related to the primary operations of the business. Commercial revenue may also be referred to as sales or as turnover. Some companies receive reven ...

. Their latest publicly available data is summarized in the table below:

McKinsey & Company

This firm was founded in

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

by James O. McKinsey in 1926. The firm has grown significantly since then, establishing 104 offices located in 60 countries as of 2014. McKinsey & Company has been voted number one in "The Best Consulting Firms: Prestige" list of the Vault.com career intelligence website consecutively for 14 years since 2002. The firm currently serves two-thirds of the

Fortune 1000 The Fortune 1000 are the 1,000 largest American companies ranked by revenues, as compiled by the American business magazine ''Fortune''. It only includes companies which are incorporated or authorized to do business in the United States, and for ...

. Their areas of expertise include

management Management (or managing) is the administration of an organization, whether it is a business, a nonprofit organization, or a Government agency, government body. It is the art and science of managing resources of the business. Management includ ...

organization An organization or organisation (English in the Commonwealth of Nations, Commonwealth English; American and British English spelling differences#-ise, -ize (-isation, -ization), see spelling differences), is an legal entity, entity—such as ...

, operations and IT.

Boston Consulting Group

BCG was founded in 1963 by Bruce D. Henderson, a former

Arthur D. Little Arthur D. Little is an international management consulting firm originally headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts, United States, founded in 1886 and formally incorporated in 1909 by Arthur Dehon Little, an MIT chemist who had discovered acetate. ...

consultant and a

Vanderbilt University Vanderbilt University (informally Vandy or VU) is a private research university in Nashville, Tennessee. Founded in 1873, it was named in honor of shipping and rail magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt, who provided the school its initial $1-million ...

and Harvard Business School alumnus. Starting out with only two consultants, the firm quickly grew. As of 2021, it employs 25,000 people in over 90 offices in more than 50 countries. BCG also has been consistently featured in ''Consulting'' magazine's "Best Firms to Work For" lists since 2001. Their areas of expertise include

corporate development Corporate development refers to the planning and execution of strategies to meet organizational objectives. The kinds of activities falling under corporate development may include management team recruitment, phasing in or out of markets or produc ...

, business growth and

innovation Innovation is the practical implementation of ideas that result in the introduction of new goods or services or improvement in offering goods or services. ISO TC 279 in the standard ISO 56000:2020 defines innovation as "a new or changed entit ...

Bain & Company

Bain was founded by Bill Bain in 1973 after leaving BCG. The firm pioneered

private equity In the field of finance, the term private equity (PE) refers to investment funds, usually limited partnerships (LP), which buy and restructure financially weak companies that produce goods and provide services. A private-equity fund is both a t ...

consulting and the fund

Bain Capital Bain Capital is an American private investment firm based in Boston. It specializes in private equity, venture capital, credit, public equity, impact investing, life sciences, and real estate. Bain Capital invests across a range of industry se ...

was founded by partners from Bain & Company and led by Mitt Romney. It currently has 65 offices in 40 countries. Their areas of expertise include

mergers and acquisitions Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) are business transactions in which the ownership of companies, other business organizations, or their operating units are transferred to or consolidated with another company or business organization. As an aspect ...

and

retail Retail is the sale of goods and services to consumers, in contrast to wholesaling, which is sale to business or institutional customers. A retailer purchases goods in large quantities from manufacturers, directly or through a wholesaler, and ...

. Bridgespan, a non-profit consultancy, was spun out of Bain in the early 2000s by three former Bain employees. The firm has been ranked multiple times as one of the "Best Places to Work" by

Glassdoor Glassdoor is an American website where current and former employees anonymously review companies. Headquartered in San Francisco, California, it has additional offices in Chicago, Dublin, London, and São Paulo. Glassdoor also allows its users to ...

, and has placed in the top five for the last decade.

References

{{Consulting International management consulting firms

The firms

McKinsey & Company

Boston Consulting Group

Bain & Company

See also

References