Abridged Financial Statements

Where a company elects to file abridged financial statements with the Companies Registration Office, the information required to be disclosed in the notes to those abridged financial statements is prescribed in the Companies Act. However, notwithstanding the provisions of section 12, the overriding consideration above all others is that the abridged financial statements are required to give a ‘true and fair view’ of the state of the company’s affairs. Accordingly, in order to ensure that the financial statements give a true and fair view of the state of the company’s affairs, it will, under certain circumstances, be necessary for companies to provide disclosure over and above that required by section 12 in the notes to their abridged financial statements.

In circumstances where the company has legitimately availed of exceptions to the general prohibition, or the company has agreed to enter into transactions or arrangements that come within the general prohibition and the exceptions thereto (or which breach the general prohibition) or the company is party to a transaction in which a person who, at any time during the period covered by the financial statements was a director of the company (or its holding company), had a material interest, details should be disclosed in the notes to the financial statements if the non-disclosure of same would result in the abridged financial statements not giving a true and fair view.