An old accounting method updated

“Pushdown accounting”: its application by spanish savings banks in its final stage

Abstract

An old accounting method, Pushdown Accounting, emerged in the 1970s in the United States,
resurrected again in this century as of 2014, consists, in a combination of companies, in using the accounting
valuation criteria of the acquiring company in the separate financial statements of the acquiree. After analyzing
the practices and regulation that arose for this purpose in the American context, and verifying the silence of
the international accounting regulations on this matter, an application of this method is contemplated in Spain,
on the occasion of the creation of the Sistemas Institucionales de Protección (Institutional Protection Systems)
(SIP), which led to the establishment of banking entities into which the Savings Banks were integrated, whose
separate financial statements on the date of their integration, December 31, 2010, applied the Pushdown
Accounting method, with the express authorization of the Banco de España (Central Bank of Spain)