Business combinations are infrequent transactions that are unique for each occurrence. IFRS 3 ‘Business Combinations’ contains the requirements and despite being fairly stable in the ten years since its been released, still provides challenges when accounting for these transactions in practice.
Our ‘Insights into IFRS 3’ series summarises the key areas of the Standard, highlighting aspects that are more difficult to interpret and revisiting the most relevant features that could impact your business.
The acquisition method set out in IFRS 3 is applied from the point of view of the acquirer – the entity that obtains control over an acquiree which meets the definition of a business. An acquirer must therefore be identified whenever there is a business combination. This article explains how to identify the acquirer.
This article should be read closely with our other ‘identification’ articles:
- Insights into IFRS 3 – Identifying a business combination within the scope of IFRS 3
- Insights into IFRS 3 – Identifying the acquisition date
A critical point to note is the acquirer for IFRS 3 purposes (the accounting acquirer) may not always be the legal acquirer (the entity that becomes the legal parent, typically through ownership of majority voting power in the other combining entity).
