Comparative Study on the Regulation of Group Companies Accounts Consolidation – Anglo-Saxon Approach versus Continental Approach

The contemporary configuration of economies covers a variety of processes. Firstly, this corresponds to the opening of savings to international transactions and the development of the exchange of goods and services. Secondly, the international mobility of production factors, and especially of capital, denotes what we need to understand through globalization. Globally, companies in the group are an economic unit, to be presented as a whole. In this respect, it is necessary to prepare consolidated financial statements by integrating the individual financial statements of the members of the group. Following the establishment of the reference framework and the conceptual coordinates of the consolidated financial statements, we continued the scientific approach by addressing the main relevant regulations at international, European and national levels, analyzing the evolution over time, existing interdependencies and current status. We presented the evolution of the accounting normalization process in order to highlight the interest for creating accounting norms that will ultimately lead to a unitary mode of action and application in order to achieve comparability of content and interpretation of accounting information. We have followed this process of accounting convergence both at the level of international, European and U.S. institutions, as well as at the level of our country, Romania.