IAPA and Allinial Global announced that they have ceased their collaboration talks for a potential merger.
In October of this year, International Accounting Bulletin had announced that IAPA members had voted overwhelmingly (78%) in favour of a merger with Allinial Global.
Allinial Global members were to vote at their own annual conference held two weeks after IAPA’s to confirm the merger.
However IAPA announced in a statement that the talks had stopped.
“Following discussions at the recent IAPA International Conference in Rio, the IAPA membership agreed (with 78% of the vote), to continue merger discussions only if Allinial Global approved several additional conditions to the proposed merger document,” the statement read. “On 2 November, Allinial Global advised IAPA that these conditions would not be accepted and as a result discussions will no longer continue.”
Contacted by International Accounting Bulletin, IAPA CEO Stephen Hamlet was not prepared to comment further on what the additional conditions were. He highlighted that regardless the two organisations and their leadership maintained friendly relations.
Equally Allinial Global CEO Terry Snyder said the two organisations would maintain the contact and members could be working together in some particular cases. After reviewing IAPA’s conditions the board decided it was better to stop the merger talks, he explained.
“We didn’t see the conclusion paper that came out of our discussions as the final document and we were ready to fine tune it,” Snyder explained. “But a lot of the conditions they proposed had to do with fundamentals like operating name, regions and governance structure, which we felt were bringing us to square one.”
Read our analysis: The whispers disappear but the whirlwind remains
