Pete Buttigieg Releases List of McKinsey Clients

WASHINGTON — Pete Buttigieg on Tuesday released the names of nine clients for whom he worked while employed as a management consultant at McKinsey & Company, a period of his life that has come under increasing scrutiny in recent weeks.

Mr. Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Ind., put out the client list one day after the firm announced it would release him from a nondisclosure agreement he signed while working at McKinsey during his first three years after finishing his education.

The client list includes:

• Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan

• Best Buy

• the Natural Resources Defense Council

• the Environmental Protection Agency

• the U.S. Department of Energy

• the United States Postal Service

• the U.S. Department of Defense

• the Energy Foundation

• Loblaws, a Canadian supermarket chain

“Voters can see for themselves that my work amounted to mostly research and analysis,” Mr. Buttigieg said in a statement released by his campaign Tuesday. “They can also see that I value both transparency and keeping my word.”

The list shows Mr. Buttigieg worked on projects in the health care and retail industries, along with federal government projects relating to the environment and the economies in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as nonprofit environmental groups.

While Mr. Buttigieg has for years spoken about his efforts, while working at McKinsey, to create an entrepreneurial environment in Iraq and Afghanistan, and wrote in his memoir this year about a project on Canadian cereal prices, the most politically troubling element of his client list might be his tenure working for Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan a health care firm that at the time was in the process of reducing its work force.

Last week Mr. Buttigieg’s campaign said his time in Michigan included “analytical work as part of a team identifying savings in administration and overhead costs.”

Blue Cross of Michigan announced in January 2009 that it would cut up to 1,000 jobs — or nearly 10 percent of its work force — and request rate increases.

The decision came after the insurance provider reported a loss of about $140 million on health care plans purchased by individuals.

The company also announced that it was freezing pay for non-union workers and cutting discretionary spending by 25 percent.

Wendell Potter, a former insurance industry executive who wrote an expose on the industry in 2010, said the industry’s use of consultants is potentially harmful to consumers.

“When health insurers bring in consultants for things like ‘assessments’ and cost cutting,” those are code words for laying off workers, denying customers medical coverage, and raising their rates,” Mr. Potter said.

The push for Mr. Buttigieg to release his client list, which aides to his presidential campaign rivals have whispered about for months, became amplified in the media in the last week following revelations that McKinsey has worked to assist the Trump administration implement its immigration policy, which is loathed by Democrats.

The disclosure comes as Mr. Buttigieg has surged ahead in some of the latest public polls of Iowa Democrats, whose caucuses will kick off the presidential nominating calendar on Feb. 3. It is the latest in a dizzying series of disclosures his campaign has made in the name of transparency.

Under pressure from Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, who is weeks into a rhetorical battle with Mr. Buttigieg in Iowa, Mr. Buttigieg on Monday agreed to allow reporters into his high-dollar fund-raising events and to disclose a list of his campaign’s financial bundlers.

Ms. Warren, who does not hold closed-door fund-raising events, had criticized Mr. Buttigieg for being part of a system that “creates conflicts every single day when candidates for president sell access to their time to the highest bidder.”

Mr. Buttigieg had previously accused Ms. Warren of being “evasive” about her health care proposal and of hiding income she earned representing corporate law clients while she was a professor at Harvard University and other schools.

Ms. Warren ultimately did release a detailed health care proposal and said Sunday that she had earned $1.9 million over 30 years representing corporate clients, a fraction of what she could have made as a professor at elite law schools.

Mr. Buttigieg, 37, said last week that he had asked McKinsey to free him from a nondisclosure agreement he signed while a firm employee. On Monday, McKinsey announced it would allow Mr. Buttigieg to reveal his clients, though he remains forbidden from discussing “confidential, proprietary or classified information obtained during the course of that work.”

“We recognize the unique circumstances presented by a presidential campaign,” a McKinsey spokesman said.