About Conor
Conor Kehoe is a director in McKinsey’s London office. He founded McKinsey’s Private Equity Practice in Europe and leads our work in the industry globally. He previously led McKinsey’s High Tech and Telecoms Practice.
Conor specialises in corporate governance, private equity, and corporate strategy. He mainly serves private equity firms and technology and telecom companies, although his corporate strategy work sometimes extends to other sectors, as when he helped a major European financial institution establish a household-name insurer in the UK.
A frequent speaker on strategy and corporate governance, Conor teaches strategy for non-executives at the Stewardship and Corporate Governance Centre in Singapore and has lectured on investment and governance at Tsinghua University in Beijing. He has also contributed to the revisions to the UK’s Board Code and Stewardship Code.
He is a member of the advisory board of a major private equity association and an executive committee member of McKinsey Solutions, which offers more standardized services from McKinsey.
Conor is also a founder member of the Global eSchools and Communities Initiative (GeSCI), a not-for-profit venture bringing IT to the educational systems of the least economically developed countries.
Conor joined McKinsey from the Granada Group, where he was chairman of one of the four divisions of this FTSE 100 company. He began his career as a software and control design engineer and holds a degree in electronic engineering from Trinity College Dublin, where he was a Foundation Scholar, and an MBA from INSEAD.
Published work
“Tapping the strategic potential of boards,” McKinsey Quarterly, February 2013
“Why Asia’s banks underperform at M&A,” McKinsey Quarterly, May 2010
“Board directors and experience: A lesson from private equity,” McKinsey on Finance, Number 35, Spring 2010 (PDF–380 KB)
“The future of private equity,” McKinsey Quarterly, April 2009
“The voice of experience: Public versus private equity,” McKinsey Quarterly, December 2008
“Service sector productivity: The tiger’s next challenge?” Perspectives on Irish Productivity, Forfas, 2007
“Services and Ireland's long-term growth,” McKinsey Quarterly, May 2006
Private Equity Performance, John Wiley, 2005
“Why some private equity firms do better than others,” McKinsey Quarterly, February 2005
Past experience
| Granada Group |
Chairman, Services to Business division |
1987-1991 |
| Measurex |
Control development engineer |
1981-82 |
| Accuspec |
Design engineer |
1979-1980 |
Education
| INSEAD |
MBA in business administration |
| Trinity College Dublin |
BAI in electronics |