Bain & Co

Bain & Company

Type	Incorporated partnership
Industry	Management consulting
Founded	1973
Founder	Bill Bain
Headquarters	Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.
Key people	Orit Gadiesh, Chairman
Products	Management consulting services
Revenue	$2.3 billion as of December 2015
Number of employees	7,000 as of May 2017
Website	www.bain.com

Bain & Company is an American global management consulting firm headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts. It provides advisory services to businesses, nonprofit organizations, and governments, and is one of the Big Three strategy consulting firms (MBB). The CEO is Bob Bechek and the CFO is Len Banos. Bain has 55 offices in 36 countries and 7,000 employees.

Bain & Company was established in 1973 by a group of seven former partners from the Boston Consulting Group headed by Bill Bain.

Under Bain's direction, the firm implemented a number of practices that were unusual to the consulting industry in its early years. Notably, Bain & Co. would work with only one client per industry to avoid potential conflicts of interest. Partners did not carry business cards, and clients were referred to by code names to enforce client confidentiality. The company won clients by boardroom referrals rather than marketing, and claimed its consultants worked on increasing a company's market value rather than simply handing clients a list of recommendations. To win business, Bain demonstrated the increase in value of their clients' stocks.

The firm's founding was followed by a period of international expansion. Even though business was sluggish and the company was overstaffed, Bain had to turn away business due to its one-client-per-industry restriction. Competition increased as other firms also adopted Bain’s implementation-focused strategy, and internal infighting among the senior partnership threatened to break up the firm. In response, Bain & Co. was formally incorporated in 1985 and, over the course of two years, an Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) was established. Bain's senior partners began borrowing against their equity for cash, eventually leaving the firm with a heavy debt load.

As business slowed, this debt load began to squeeze the firm. Bain ultimately found itself in non-compliance with Bank of New England loan covenants. The resulting debt write-off at the Bank of New England eventually resulted in that bank's failure in 1991.