51 3.1 Acquisition Provisions To apply the acquisition method of accounting, the acquirer must determine the fair value of net identifiable assets acquired. In turn, measuring the fair value of net assets acquired has a direct effect on the measurement of both goodwill and non-controlling interests. In addition, fair value adjustments for assets, liabilities and goodwill may have a significant effect on the acquirer’s subsequent reported income in the consolidated financial statements. Consider the following simple example. An acquirer agrees to pay £100 in cash for all the voting shares of the acquiree. At the time of acquisition, the fair value of net assets acquired is £50. In this case, goodwill would be (£100 - £50 =) £50 with no difference between the full or partial method of accounting, because there are no minorities. Now suppose that the acquirer decides to establish a “provision for reorganization costs” of £20 and include this provision on the acquiree’s bal- ance sheet at the date of acquisition as part of the purchase price allocation. In this case, the fair value of net assets acquired would be (£50 - £20 =) £30 and good- will would be (£100 - £30 =) £70. Why is that so important? Consider the subsequent year. The acquiree will incur a cost of £20 in reorganizing acquired business. Without the provision, the accounting entry would be: £ Dr. Cr. Reorganization costs (income statement) 20 Cash 20 More Issues in Purchase Accounting 3 © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 E. Amir and M. Ghitti, Financial Analysis of Mergers and Acquisitions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-61769-1_3 Electronic supplementary material The online version of this chapter (https://doi.org/10.1007/978- 3-030-61769-1_3) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.