By Jack Sweeney
A year ago last spring, as IBM Corp. advanced the sale of its struggling PC unit to Lenovo, China's largest computer maker, the Chinese tech giant convened a gathering of the company's directors and bankers in a Beijing conference room.
Here, as in so many other business gatherings invisible to the public eye and all but unknown to the world's media, a consultant found a chair. Wedged between the investment bankers and various Lenovo corporate officers sat a McKinsey & Company consultant. While just what this consultant may have contributed to the meeting is not publicly known, his firm's participation in the deal — one widely viewed as having historical proportions — speaks to the new and powerful role management consultants play in the economies of the world. Or does it?
