CIMA boss Charles Tilley has flatly rejected the idea of a merger with another accounting institute.

Speaking on Accountancy Age TV, the CIMA chief exec shot down any notion that management accountants were even considering such a move.

‘That is absolutely a no,’ said Tilley. ‘There is no merger on the horizon.’
Several attempts by the institutes to combine have been derailed in the recent past, and CIMA’s chief exec said that the institute would be continuing as a standalone organisation.

The last merger attempt in 2005 between CIPFA, CIMA and the ICAEW went ahead without CIMA, which pulled out half-way through. The ICAEW and CIPFA soldiered on, but a formal partnership fell by the wayside after ICAEW members narrowly rejected the move by just a few hundred votes.

Since the merger failure, there has been more bad blood between the institutes after the ICAEW launched the Pathways scheme, which sought to lure senior CIMA and ACCA members through its doors.