The CPA Australia board is scheduled to meet next on June 23, a full two weeks from now. That's right, a quarter of their number (including the president) has resigned with immediate effect, the organisation's disclosures are in apparent breach of corporations law and a burgeoning group of members are in revolt, but the surviving directors can't see any pressing reason to convene without delay. Can you believe it? To wit, the mind-boggling latitude disruptive CEO Alex Malley has been making the very most of.
And now CPA's whole business model is imperilled by management's incompetence.
The government agency overseeing CPA's licence as a professional standards body (which it must have to be a regulator of the accounting profession) is seriously considering, based on the advice of the Crown Solicitor, to revoke that licence. It would be the equivalent of a trucking company losing its roadworthiness certificate: nothing short of a debacle.
The Professional Standards Council alerted CPA to its concerns 18 months ago! Wakey wakey! The government believed (and now has been legally advised) that CPA's foray into financial planning (what Greg Medcraft unironically called "a bold initiative") would fundamentally redefine the members' organisation from umpire to player, and in doing so invalidate CPA's status and its members' liability protection.
Malley and the board held up CPA Australia Advice as transformative, and boy were they right for all the wrong reasons. Not only has it already lost CPA members $12 million ($3.8 million of which was in salaries, $1 million of which was trousered by key management personnel, the rest by 14 employees), and not only has it signed up just 25 CPAs as agents, it now actually threatens to destroy CPA. What more would it take to get these directors to act?
We're sure the board will eventually get around to discussing this existential survival risk. Perhaps after they approve Malley's next bonus, the cinematic release of his biographical documentary and the AGM advance team's planning trip to Andalusia.
