Talk:Bain & Company

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Contents 1 Competitors 2 Near bankruptcy & other failures 3 history 4 Rewrite 5 Blatant Advertising

[edit] Competitors

As far as I understand it, Bain primarily competes against McKinsey and BCG. There are much bigger consulting firms with larger "market share" if you define consulting broadly, but in terms of pitching actual client work, Bain primarily sees just McKinsey and BCG. Fairsing 23:21, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. When preparing for a bakeoff, a Bain pitch would stress the attributes that distinguish it from BCG and McKinsey, not Mercer or Booz-Allen. (The distinguishing factor for those are pretty clear - $$$.)

Not sure that I would describe Monitor Group as a 'boutique'. The firm has about 1,500 consultants and a global presence. It is also the leader in areas such as innovation, pricing and scenario thinking. No need to start an edit war though, so I will leave this and see if the person who made the edit has further context for the decision.steven (talk) 22:40, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Near bankruptcy & other failures

Wasn't Bain & Company near bankrupt at one point? Did the firm suffer any other major failures (Bain itself and/or its clients)? What I like about Wikipedia is that you get to find out information that companies don't publicize on their webpages.

The most serious threat Bain has faced was not an issue of business practice, but of internal politics. Thwarting the attempted buyout by former partners placed severe stress on the company's financial position. This is the "failed buyout attempt" mentioned in the wiki entry, and I assume it's the "near bankruptcy" you're referring to. Beyond that, Bain has certainly had both client successes and client failures, but that's more an issue of management consulting in general. I'm not aware of any failures on the level of, say, Enron/Anderson Accounting that seriously destabilized the firm.

[edit] history

This History is way out of date. The year is 2007, and 90% of the information in the history section is from the 80s. There is almost nothing from the 90s and there is nothing after 2000.

[edit] Rewrite

I performed a rewrite of the page; in addition to condensing the language, I used several other sources to add more color to the article. The previous version seemed to be a chopped up crib of the Vault guide, with a large amount of unnecessary detail. I've tried to compress that work into its main themes (early successes, Guiness debacle, ESOP double-debacle, Romney's return), and then added more about the recovery in the 1990s where the original article stopped. Would be happy to discuss any changes on the talkpage. (I have also removed the unsourced-tag.)

[edit] Blatant Advertising

This page is a clear violation of Blatant Advertising rules and is potential grounds for deletion.

Needs to be edited to report relevant company facts rather than act as an advertisement or it will be subject to a speedy deletion.

09/19/2007 - 17:00 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 140.247.153.153 (talk) 21:44, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

I agree, the recruiting part especially reads like something from an internal pep magazine. 213.214.57.217 (talk) 02:35, 23 November 2007 (UTC)Hicham Vanborm

This was especially evident in the "Recruiting" section. I've modified it, but haven't really checked the rest. I encourage everyone to make attempts towards neutralizing "advertisement speech", in addition to/instead of posting multiple comments about the issue.-DMCer (talk) 11:27, 13 December 2007 (UTC)