Business / Consolidation
(b) Consolidation The Company’s consolidated financial statements include the financial statements of all controlled subsidiaries. In determining, under IFRS 10, whether the Company controls an investee, the Company assesses whether it has (i) power over the investee, (ii) exposure or rights to variable returns from its involvement, and (iii) the ability to use power over investees to affect the amount of return. To determine whether the Company has power over the investee, multiple contractual elements are analyzed, among which (i) voting rights of the Company at the General Meeting, (ii) voting rights of the Company at Board level and (iii) the power of the Company to appoint, reassign or remove other key management personnel. For investees, whereby such contractual elements are not conclusive because all decisions about the relevant activities are taken on a mutual consent basis, the main deciding feature resides then in the deadlock clause existing in shareholders’ agreements. In case a deadlock situation arises at the Board of Directors of an entity, whereby the Board is unable to conclude a decision, the deadlock clause of the shareholders’ agreements generally stipulates whether a substantive right is granted to the Company or to all the partners in the entity to buy its shares through a compensation mechanism that is fair enough for the Company or one of the partners to acquire these shares. In case such a substantive right resides with the Company, the entity will be defined under IFRS 10 as controlled by the Company. In case no such substantive right is held by any of the shareholders through the deadlock clause, the entity will be defined as a joint arrangement. Subsidiaries: Subsidiaries are all entities over which the group has control. The group controls an entity when the group is exposed to, or has rights to, variable returns from its involvement with the entity and has the ability to affect those returns through its power over the entity. Subsidiaries are consolidated using the full consolidation method. All reciprocal transactions between two controlled subsidiaries, with no profit or loss impact at consolidation level, are fully eliminated for the preparation of the consolidated financial statements. Interests in joint arrangements: The Company has applied IFRS 11 ’Joint Arrangements’ to all joint arrangements. Under IFRS 11, investments i