Time for fresh merger thinking
Talk of institute mergers just won't die down. The Lord Mayor of London was the latest influence-wielder to revisit the subject and while institute executives themselves are hugely reluctant to be heard to be talking about alliances, they are bound to be asked questions again once they return from their summer villas.
So here's an idea. Why restrict merger thinking to just accountancy?
Clout aside, one of the most compelling reasons for rationalising the number of institutes for me has been to cut down on back office costs – administration, IT, research, staff and so on.
CIPFA and the ICAEW are already going down this route of course. But why stop there? And for that matter why confine thinking to just ICAS, CIMA, ACCA and the ICAI?
Brace yourself, why not the Law Society? Or the Royal Institution for Chartered Surveyors? The latter supports 130,000 members worldwide – as does the ICAEW.
Could the Bar Council be a viable partner. Or the British Medical Associations? Perhaps not. But the Institution of Civil Engineers has 80,000 members and the infrastructure required to support a membership base slightly larger than CIMA's.
Could a back office merger with a non-competitive institute be a way of assuaging sensitive memberships and of keeping costs down? It couldn't hurt, could it? Then we can move on to the question of whether six principal institutes have more clout together or separately.
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