CIMA’s Chief Executive Charles Tilley receives OBE for services to economy

CIMA’s Chief Executive Charles Tilley has been awarded the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for services to the economy. Tilley, who has led CIMA since 2001, was recognised in the 2016 New Year’s honours list. CIMA is the world’s leading and largest institute of management accountants. 

During his tenure he has seen the number of CIMA members and students almost double; created a joint venture with the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants; helped spearhead the introduction of the management accounting profession’s first comprehensive set of written principles; and been a leading advocate for reporting and accounting for the whole business and not just the balance sheet. 

CIMA’s President Myriam Madden said on behalf of CIMA’s Council and members: “I am absolutely thrilled that Charles’ leadership has been recognised in this way. He has practically demonstrated the value of management accounting and driven the reputation and relevance of our institute – firms across the world are using CIMA qualified management accountants to power up their business, and Charles can take a huge amount of credit for this.” 

CIMA, the organisation Tilley has steered for one and a half decades, was founded in 1919. Management accountants combine the technical, business, leadership and people skills which enable organisations to best take decisions to create and preserve value over the short, medium and long term. 

In 2011, Tilley oversaw the launch of a joint venture with the AICPA, the USA’s leading and largest professional body for accountants. In 2014, and together with CIMA’s American partners, he helped launch the Global Management Accounting Principles, the first comprehensive framework of its kind, designed to bring consistency to management accounting functions around the world and help organisations make smarter and faster decisions. 

Throughout his time at CIMA, Tilley has argued that organisations should report more than just their financial results. In the past five years, he has been a high-profile advocate for Integrated Reporting (IR), a framework for organisations to report their strategy, governance, performance and prospects, going beyond their narrow financial figures to give a full understanding of the prospects of the business. IR not only ensures stakeholders are better informed; it also encourages decision makers to ‘join the dots’, and thereby manage risk, build resilience and succeed in the long-term.

Charles Tilley said: “This is not something I expected – but it is hugely welcome. As hard as I have worked over the past fourteen years, the victories I have been proud of – most notably the increasing recognition of the value of management accounting, the growth of integrated reporting and the huge success of CIMA’s joint venture – have all been achieved with the help of colleagues in CIMA together with our members and students, and those we work with across the world. 

“Management accounting has a vital role to build better businesses trusted by society – this honour is welcome recognition of the considerable progress we have made, on which we at CIMA will now build on for the future.”