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| Author | Tilley, Charles |
| Position | Charles Tilley's plans for the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants |
These are exciting times for CIMA, with a move to different premises and a new man at the top. Charles Tilley tells Gemma Townley about his aspirations for the future of the institute
Charles Tilley does not like standing still. The new chief executive of CIMA spends most of his free time sailing, playing tennis, cycling round Europe or water-skiing.
It was this love of adventure and need to push himself that led Tilley to qualify as a chartered accountant and join KPMG, where, by the age of 35, he was a partner and "hugely enjoying the variety of the work". But after 14 years of working as an auditor, a phone call from the chief executive of investment bank Hambros convinced him to leave auditing behind and take on the role of group finance director.
"Partnership in a firm like KPMG is something you aspire to," explains Tilley, "and having achieved it, I wasn't really sure where to go next. I was also aware that, as one of 500 partners, I would probably make little impact on the firm, whereas as finance director at Hambros I could really make a difference"
After eight years, Tilley moved to Granville Baird, another investment bank. After three years, the bank asked Tilley to build up and launch a wealth-management operation for UK customers. The strategy itself was top notch, but the timing was terrible -- as the chill winds of the current economic downturn began to blow, Tilley was asked to sell the business. He did so in May 2001, and joined CIMA soon afterwards.
His experiences have taught him a great deal about running a successful business. While investment bankers may have a reputation for blowing huge amounts of money on business expenses, Tilley's role as finance director has taught him unequivocally that cash flow is the be all and end all of business success. A fact which, he believes, explains the downfall of many dotcom ventures.
"Amazon's valuation at its peak would have required the company to have a third of all sales in the book market to justify it," he says. "The valuation simply defied all logic -- even if Amazon had been phenomenally successful, I doubt the competition authorities would allow such a monopoly. Allowing valuations to move so far away from reality is always going to mean problems in the future. In some cases, high valuations can be justified, for instance in the case of the early days of Microsoft, but this is rare."
He argues that keeping a careful eye on cash flow and focusing on people are the two most...
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