[Matty81]

Everybody will have their own opinion... my 2 cents based on my experience if the bridging courses are applicable to any designation is that you should think hard about what kind of accounting job you want and choose a designation to match. If you know you like tax/consulting/external audit stuff definitely go the CA route. Sorry that I can't comment on whether or not they'd take you on at your age as I'm don't know that world well. There are lots of jobs for accountants outside public practice if you're more interested in working in a finance department/internal audit/operations and I think a CGA/CMA is a better choice if that's your preference. You could definitely get an entry level finance job and work on one of those designations, at any age.

Personally think the big 4 path is admirable and I wouldn't hesitate to hire somebody who has gone down that road but not necessary or maybe even as good as the other designations unless you want to stay with a big 4 company/public practice for your whole career and shoot for partner. If you want to work in industry and try to become a cfo/controller/director etc you'd be further ahead doing a designation you can complete while working in a finance department vs. a few years of grinding out audits or doing tax stuff. Our CFO in a very large organization is a CGA and most of our finance hierarchy are CGAs or CMAs - the days of CA being clearly superior across the board are gone (my 2 cents anyway) - all our senior postings these days ask for is "a designation". Other guys might be able to chime in if their organization still seeks CAs for the top jobs.

With the three designations talking about merging if you want to work in industry CGA or CMA is a no brainer right now. Easier road and you'll end up with the same credential, easier to find a place to get the experience, and you can start to learn about your chosen industry right away rather than doing tax or audit stuff for 2-4 years and then trying to make the switch and learning about operations of a totally new business from scratch. The CA route is obviously way better if you want to work in public practice - the reputation of the designation in that world is clearly superior. Among our leadership team who are not accountants I don't really see them perceiving much if any difference between the designations, they just see it as having an accounting designation and judge the person on their strengths/weaknesses after that.

Anyway probably got you way off track, maybe you already have your mind made up on CA and sorry I wasn't able to answer the big 4 availability question better.