Anne-Marie Piper completes her overview on the subject of charity mergers In the last issue I began this overview of charity mergers. I explained the duties of charity trustees in relation to mergers and then examined the various steps in the merger process including the exploratory discussions and preliminary checks, the “in-principle” decision to merge and the process known as due diligence and at some of the issues that it can throw up including staff, pensions, VAT and material contracts.