The "We have the convention coming up, plus we're in the process of getting a new executive director," said NBTA president and CEO Kevin Maguire. "We will look at their proposal. We've not spent any time on it yet, simply because we haven't had the time to look at something that we received through the media. Before we can really talk about anything, we need full due diligence on financials. Unless we have that, it doesn't really matter what the proposals are--we don't know where we stand. I told [Association of Corporate Travel Executives president] Richard Crum we would talk after the convention." After ACTE re-started merger talks, the Professional Convention Management Association "ceased its due diligence process" on a
strategic alliance with ACTE, announced last month. In a memo sent to the PCMA board, PCMA board chairman John Folks blamed the demise of the ACTE-PCMA alliance on the latest NBTA merger outline, but also cited "additional financial challenges" that surfaced as PCMA's CFO began due diligence with ACTE. According to the memo, these challenges were prompted by the resignation of ACTE finance director Cynthia Godes. An ACTE spokesman said the resignation was partly due to the fact that the alliance agreement called for that position to be outsourced to PCMA. ACTE has hired a new finance director slated to begin next week, the spokesman said.