Impact of common control combination transactions in Malawian Banking Industry

There is growing interest in common control combination across the global as preparers of financial statements are grappling with increased scrutiny in company acquisitions and mergers within particular business group for varied reasons more importantly because there are currently no accounting standards both under International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRSs) and US GAAPs. Such transactions could be subjected to massive abuse under creative accounting (financial statement fraud) or errors with little mitigating factors to the detriment of the users of the financial statements. The results of this study indicate that Malawian Banking industry is struggling in accounting for common control combinations and this is a major cause for concern. Public accountants, industry regulators and stock exchanges must up their game to be more vigilant when dealing with reporting entities which have undertaken common control combination transactions