Chartered Accountants & CPA Merger

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Padraig Bateman said:
4. The CPA have 263 audit practice firms in Ireland with the CAI having 467 audit practice firms so there will be a lot of competition among small and medium sized practice firms for audits trading as Chartered Accountants audit practice firms. There are 1,947 CAI practice firms in Ireland and there are 613 CPA practice firms in Ireland which will lead be intense competition for clients as CPA firms can trade as Chartered Accountant firms if the merger proceeds.
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I almost laughed out loud at these bits.

What planet are they on?
 
Surely most clients don’t care which body their accountant pays fees to?

Outside of the big 4 situations of course (where they are all ACA) I’d say a lot of clients look at services and prices not CPA v ACCA v ACA.

But will members of CAI feel threatened by the new chartered firms, ie name changes?
 
i guess there are going to some changes for staff in both institutions. But no redundancies I think they said in the tik toks etc
 
Annieindublin said:
i guess there are going to some changes for staff in both institutions. But no redundancies I think they said in the tik toks etc
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No redundancies, and taking on more property losses (earlier on the thread someone was praising CPA for not being as unwise and CAI in their property investments) means little to no synergies from the merger. As I remember from my lectures in Pearse street, most mergers fail as they don't achieve the required synergies.
 
Fair point so what are the synergies? Maybe for course for students? One lecturer can add a few more to the class with little impact. Are their classes online or in person these days? If in person then there’s a few lecture rooms less needed as well.
I don’t know what else they spend money on, I guess it’s in the accounts somewhere.
Eventually there will be one building less and that’ll reduce costs a fair bit.

will they have 2 CEOs and 2 receptionists… looking at the likely ends of the pay scales. Just 2 jobs that spring to mind for most mergers. Only merger I was ever in we lost a few staff but not very many. And that took 2-3 years. But one CEO left immediately
 
Padraig Bateman said:
2. The CPA offices at 17 Harcourt Street, Dublin 2 may not sell for some time as there are a lot of offices in that area for sale and there will be a substantial loss on the sale and the CAI members will have to fund around €3 million of the loss as there is around €4 million of a Bank loan on the offices. The CPA have incurred losses in their most recently published financial statements. If the merger goes ahead it will cost CAI members dearly as there could be serious liabilities that they could be taking on and the staff in the CPA will have to be made redundant or employed by the CAI adding to the very large staff numbers already in the CAI.
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Looking at the CPA annual report the book value of the building at year end 2023 is -

Cost $11.413 Million + addition)
Depreciation $2.262 Million
NBV $9.301 Million
Mortgage of $3.6M

Where is the loss of $3M coming from?

As I do not know or pretend to understand the real estate market in Ireland, from my past experience in Canada (and I am involved in the real estate market), the selling price of the building is almost always a lot higher than the book value. For example, we had a building that was built in the early 70s at a cost of about $5 million CAD. Today, it is worth about $130 million CAD.

Looking at the worst-case scenario, if CAI sold that building for $8.0 million and had to pay off the $3.6 million mortgage, CAI would pocket $4 million from the sale of the building. And that should be the low side. What do you think the upside will be from the sale?

Can you explain your logic behind your claims?

CPA incurred a $146K cost regarding the merger resulting in a loss of $115K. Without the $146K, it would result in a small surplus of $30K for 2023. We are all qualified accountants, and if we cannot properly analyze simple financial data, we are in big trouble.

I have no say in your merger. I am an outsider who is curious on how this will end up and how the accounting bodies will transform around the globe. Lets discuss facts not conjectures.
 
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Members of both institutes already voted to merge.
Consolidation is not uncommon in many industries.
It has been successful in the pharmaceutical industry and even my local credit union has merged successfully.

I am glad that members of both institutes had the vision and confidence to support the merger.

The old Irish word "Meitheal " - comes to mind.
 
Padraig Bateman said:
3.The CPA members can use both CPA and ACA and they can use both FCPA and FCA which isn’t acceptable to the CAI members as it appears that CPA/FCPA have more qualifications than the CAI members.
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Both CPA and ACA can use both designations, as per documents I have read, once the court gives the blessing of the merger. I will not address #4, as someone here thought it was pretty funny. It was more like a gish gallop to me. The email need to be re written badly. As it is, I would laugh at it and throw it away!
 
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Fortune said:
Voting for it doesn't mean it'll work
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I am very confident that it will work
I feel a lot of work has happened behind the scenes to make a success of this.

I am actually more concerned about the changes AI is bringing to the profession and the pressure that many small to medium businesses are under.
 
Was there a low turnout in both?
I suspect there always is for bodies like this. After you’ve got the exams over with and are registered it’s fairly unimportant to a lot of people. Like the leaving cert… big deal at the time then meh!
 
I assume the people in control, directors or elders of some sort, in each body have done the maths.
The campaign must have cost a fair bit plus won’t they have each done due diligence (?) of some sort. I vaguely recall some lectures on that as part of the process. So before they even announced it there was a lot done by consultants.
Let’s hope they can get the maths right.

Dunno about the people element, is that why so many mergers fail? Key staff get the hump? Or key customers.. the latter can’t happen, members won’t resign if they need the letters after their names. So a fairly safe bet in terms of income then.
 
Gordon Gekko said:
Given how few people voted, that’s hardly accurate.
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It is called democracy.
The members of both institutes believed this is best for both institutes.


From a financial point of view-it most certainly does.

One website, one magazine, one membership fee to iassa etc.

I was not surprised membership of both institutes backed the merger.
 
cork said:
I am very confident that it will work
I feel a lot of work has happened behind the scenes to make a success of this.

I am actually more concerned about the changes AI is bringing to the profession and the pressure that many small to medium businesses are under.
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Clearly they haven't done the work if there are to be no redundancies.

Joining together two institutions is hardly going to mitigate any changes caused by adoption of Large Language Models.

cork said:
It is called democracy.
The members of both institutes believed this is best for both institutes.


From a financial point of view-it most certainly does.

One website, one magazine, one membership fee to iassa etc.

I was not surprised membership of both institutes backed the merger.
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The cost saving of a magazine, website and iassa membership would be overshadowed by the costs of merging.
 
Members already voted to merge.
I wold be surprised if these once off costs arent already incurred.
 
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