Consolidation (business)

In business, consolidation or amalgamation is the merger and acquisition of many smaller companies into a few much larger ones. In the context of financial accounting, consolidation refers to the aggregation of financial statements of a group company as consolidated financial statements. The taxation term of consolidation refers to the treatment of a group of companies and other entities as one entity for tax purposes. Under the Halsbury's Laws of England, amalgamation is defined as "a blending together of two or more undertakings into one undertaking, the shareholders of each blending company, becoming, substantially, the shareholders of the blended undertakings. There may be amalgamations, either by transfer of two or more undertakings to a new company or the transfer of one or more companies to an existing company". Consolidation is the practice, in business, of legally combining two or more organizations into a single new one. Upon consolidation, the original organizations cease to exist and are supplanted by a new entity. Access to new technologies/techniques Access to new clients Access to new geographies Cheaper financing for a bigger company Seeking for hidden or nonperforming assets belonging to a target company (e.g. real estate) Bigger companies tend to have superior bargaining power over their suppliers and clients (e.g. Walmart) Synergies There are three forms of business combinations: Statutory Merger: a business combination that results in the liquidation of the acquired company's assets and the survival of the purchasing company. Statutory Consolidation: a business combination that creates a new company in which none of the previous companies survive. Stock Acquisition: a business combination in which the purchasing company acquires the majority, more than 50%, of the Common stock of the acquired company and both companies survive. Variable interest entity Parent-subsidiary relationship: the result of a stock acquisition where the parent is the acquiring company and the subsidiary is the acquired company.