£1.4M Wasted

According to today's Independent, the ICAEW has spent £1.4M on trying to win the merger campaign.

I would suspect that the figure excludes the fees paid to Media Strategy, the PR firm hired by the ICAEW to persuade us.

However, the article also notes that the ICAEW is preparing itself for an embarrassing climb down; as private polls show that it might lose the vote.

I would like to make this observation, the vote is not over until the polls close; as such it is vital to ensure that everyone votes on this issue.

Please make sure that everyone you know votes.

Thanks for your help and support.

Ken

Just in case you have forgotten, here are a few reasons as to why you should vote against the merger.

I have recorded a short video outlining my personal views about the ICAEW merger proposal.

Please click the following link to watch the video ICAEW Video 10MB.

I also have a "high quality" 22MB version, which you can view here ICAEW Video 22MB.

Reasons To Vote No

• The merger will dilute the brand



• Merging CIPFA and the ICAEW is not a merger of equals, we should be merging "like with like"



• The merger will increase the size of Council, from its current unwieldy and inefficient size of 90, to 115 members



• A two tier membership, as promised by Council, will be confusing to the membership, the outside world and impractical to administer



• Council will renege on its promise to run a dual qualification system



• To hand over control of the governing council of the ICAEW, to a new body, will denude the current membership of its right to veto who can become an accountant



• We should be talking to ICAS about merging, not CIPFA and CIMA



• The ICAEW have mismanaged the merger proposal from day one, by talking to the wrong bodies and by antagonising ICAS over the choice of name



• The Audit Commission has noted that 25% of submitted local council accounts have to be resubmitted, because of significant errors and "significant" departures from UK GAAP



• The mixture of qualifications that the merged body would embrace, would mean that it could not accurately claim to be called The Institute of Chartered Accountants



• The proposal to takeover CIPFA will add only another 13500 members to our numbers, that represents a mere 11% of our current membership. This will not alter the status quo, or increase our standing within the financial community



• If the merger were truly "revenue enhancing", as the ICAEW would have us believe, why did they raise subscriptions by 9% for 2006?



• The ICAEW is meant to represent the interests of its members, yet it is ignoring the membership and wasting our money on trying to convince us of the need to merge with CIPFA