ABSTRACT
The treatment of company accounts so far has dealt with single companies. In fact many companies form into groups, for a variety of reasons. Indeed, most large, well-known ‘companies’ are, in fact, groups. Accounting for groups of companies has its own particular aspects. The next two chapters aim to provide you with an appreciation of these aspects, so as to enable you to be able to understand a set of published accounts for a group of companies, and to apply the principles dealt with in subsequent chapters to groups as well as to individual companies. This chapter deals with general issues and the balance sheet, while Chapter 16 deals with the group profit and loss account.
