Consolidated financial statements are financial statements that factor the holding company's subsidiaries into its aggregated accounting figure. It is a representation of how the holding company is doing as a group. The consolidated accounts should provide a true and fair view of the financial and operating conditions of the group. Doing so typically requires a complex set of eliminating and consolidating entries to work back from individual financial statements to a group financial statement that is an accurate representation of operations.
The guiding principle of consolidated financial statements is that of the 'single entity' principle. The aim of consolidated financial statement is to show the performance of the group as if it were a single entity. This means that all intra-group transactions (sales from one group company to another group company, for example) and intra-group balances (intercompany loans, for example) need to be eliminated as otherwise the consolidated financial statements would double count these balances.
Famous quotes containing the words consolidated, financial and/or statement:
“Prestige is the shadow of money and power. Where these are, there it is. Like the national market for soap or automobiles and the enlarged arena of federal power, the national cash-in area for prestige has grown, slowly being consolidated into a truly national system.”
—C. Wright Mills (1916–1962)
“America is a nation with no truly national city, no Paris, no Rome, no London, no city which is at once the social center, the political capital, and the financial hub.”
—C. Wright Mills (1916–1962)
“The new statement will comprise the skepticisms, as well as the faiths of society, and out of unbeliefs a creed shall be formed. For, skepticisms are not gratuitous or lawless, but are limitations of the affirmative statement, and the new philosophy must take them in, and make affirmations outside of them, just as much as must include the oldest beliefs.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)