1. I understand that the asymmetry you mentioned means that the accounting principles of the seller and the merging party are inconsistent, that is, the merging party adopts the principle of business combination under the same control: it is treated as if the merged party directly exists within the merging scope of the merging party; However, the party selling the subsidiary shall treat it as a subsidiary and include it in the current profit and loss, instead of including the sold subsidiary in the scope of consolidation as if it never existed, and then adjusting the retained earnings and other related subjects. Let's start with the buyer. According to domestic standards, the merging party adopts the method of combining rights and interests.
2. The combination of rights and interests method regards merger as a distinguishable combination of rights and interests, and enterprise merger is the continuation of the merged party and the merged party. Based on this idea, it is necessary to trace back, as if the two sides were merged from beginning to end. The specific treatment method is 1 A single company will record the combined company and the exchanged consideration according to the book value, and the difference will be included in the capital reserve. 2 At the consolidated statement level, during the retrospective period, the assets and liabilities of the merged company in the corresponding period are included in the consolidated statement, and all the rights and interests are included in the capital reserve. During the period of paying the consideration, the corresponding asset items with consideration will be reduced, and the capital reserve will also be reduced. It will cause a strange phenomenon, that is, the rights and interests during the current merger period are greatly reduced compared with the previous period, because there has always been a white thing in the rights and interests (the right to buy a company) in the last period, but an asset (consideration) was given for no reason during the current merger period, which correspondingly reduced a capital reserve.
3. The main reasons for this treatment are as follows: If the main form of consideration in business combination is equity (usually called merger), in this transaction, the owner's equity will continue to exist (or exist completely or substantially), and no new capital will be invested or assets will be distributed. The owner's equity after the merger is commensurate with that before the merger, and the purpose of the merger is to unify the business strategy. Therefore, the merger should be accounted for according to the book amount of assets and liabilities of both parties, because unlike the acquisition, only the buyer exists in the acquisition, and all the merging parties still exist effectively in the merger.
At present, the method of combining rights and interests has been gradually abandoned by all countries, and the purchase method has gradually become the mainstream. In 2008, both IASB and FASB began to delete the method of combining rights and interests from the standards, only under certain conditions as an acceptable practical method in business combination under the same control. However, China's standards have always regarded the combination of rights and interests as the accounting treatment method of business combination under the same control.