MBS and the Consultants: How McKinsey, BCG, and the Advisory Industry Sold Saudi Arabia an Impossible Future

Sun, 05 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

McKinsey, BCG and Saudi Arabia

McKinsey and BCG sit at the centre of Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 consulting machine: NEOM strategy, megaproject scope, large fee exposure, and public accountability questions. The Saudi consulting market is valued at $3.98 billion in 2025, representing 45 per cent of the entire Gulf Cooperation Council consulting market. The Kingdom is the most lucrative consulting market in the Middle East. It is also the most consequential, because the plans the consultants designed became the projects the Kingdom built, and the projects the Kingdom built became the most expensive collection of cancelled, suspended, and quietly killed construction programmes in the history of sovereign development.

The McKinsey Bill: $1 Billion in Fees for Unbuildable Plans

Sun, 05 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The McKinsey NEOM relationship is, at its simplest, a consulting-fee story. McKinsey and Company, the world’s most influential management consulting firm, has earned more than $130 million per year from its engagement with NEOM, according to reporting by DeSmog in October 2024. The engagement has continued since the project’s inception in 2017. Over nine years, the cumulative advisory bill likely exceeds $1 billion, a figure that would make NEOM one of McKinsey’s largest single-client engagements in the firm’s history.

Consulting on SAUDI VISION 2030 Intelligence Platform

MBS and the Consultants: How McKinsey, BCG, and the Advisory Industry Sold Saudi Arabia an Impossible Future

McKinsey, BCG and Saudi Arabia

The McKinsey Bill: $1 Billion in Fees for Unbuildable Plans