The Development of Accounting Solutions for Transformations of Business Companies and Cooperatives over the Last Twenty Years

Accounting and business regulation for the transformation of commercial companies over the last twenty years has crystallized into five developmental stages. By analyzing and comparing the legal and accounting concepts, we can say that the last stage is characterized by an extensive choice of laws in terms of business regulation. The major, on-going problem of the legal concept is that it does not differentiate transformations involving the creation of a new ownership structure within a legal successor, where the legal successor is materially a new owner – acquirer, from those transformations in which a new structure does not arise, i.e., those that represent merely a restructuring while maintaining the original ownership structure. While the legal and accounting regulations up to the fourth stage generally addressed transformations as purchases, business and accounting regulations in the fifth stage provides solutions mainly for transformation type restructuring. Highlighting postings based on the individual accounting transactions of the companies involved, especially if the unusual, socalled opening balance sheet method is applied, leads to a suppression of information links between the summary financial information from the financial statements prepared at the entry into the transformation and the summarized financial information in the form of an opening balance sheet of the legal successor.