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4.1 CONSOLIDATED FINANCIAL STATEMENTS AND NOTES TO THE CONSOLIDATED FINANCIAL STATEMENTS
Statutory auditors' report on the consolidated financial statements
DANONE
REGISTRATION DOCUMENT 2015
142
STATUTORY AUDITORS' REPORT ON THE CONSOLIDATED FINANCIAL STATEMENTS
This is a free translation into English of the Statutory auditors' report on the consolidated financial statements issued in French and is provided
solely for the convenience of English-speaking users. The Statutory auditors' report includes information specifically required by French law in
such reports, whether modified or not. This information presented below is the audit opinion on the consolidated financial statements and includes
an explanatory paragraph discussing the auditors' assessments of certain significant accounting and auditing matters. These assessments were
considered for the purpose of issuing an audit opinion on the consolidated financial statements taken as a whole and not to provide separate
assurance on individual account balances, transactions or disclosures. This report also includes information relating to the specific verification
of information given in the Group's management report. This report should be read in conjunction with, and construed in accordance with, French
law and professional auditing standards applicable in France.
To the shareholders,
In compliance with the assignment entrusted to us by your Shareholders' Meeting, we hereby report to you, for the year ended Decem-
ber 31, 2015, on:
•
the audit of the accompanying consolidated financial statements of Danone;
•
the justification of our assessments;
•
the specific verification required by law.
These consolidated financial statements have been approved by the Board of Directors. Our role is to express an opinion on these conso-
lidated financial statements based on our audit.
I – Opinion on the consolidated financial statements
We conducted our audit in accordance with professional standards applicable in France; those standards require that we plan and per-
form the audit to obtain reasonable assurance that the consolidated financial statements are free of material misstatement. An audit
involves performing procedures, using sampling techniques or other methods of selection, to obtain audit evidence about the amounts
and disclosures in the consolidated financial statements. It also includes evaluating the appropriateness of accounting policies used and
the reasonableness of accounting estimates made, as well as the overall presentation of the consolidated financial statements. We believe
that the audit evidence we have obtained is sufficient and appropriate to provide a basis for our audit opinion.
In our opinion, the consolidated financial statements give a true and fair view of the assets and liabilities and of the financial position of
the Group as of December 31, 2015, and of the results of its operations for the year then ended in accordance with International Financial
Reporting Standards as adopted by the European Union.
II – Justification of assessments
In accordance with the requirements of Article L. 823-9 of the French commercial code relating to the justification of our assessments,
we bring to your attention the following matters:
•
your company presented under the “Other operating income (expense)” heading in the Consolidated income statement the impacts
of the false alert issued by Fonterra in respect of certain ingredients supplied to your group in Asia in 2013, of your company's plan
for cost savings and adaptation of the Group's entities in Europe as well as of the transformational Danone 2020 plan, as described
in Notes 6.2, 6.3 and 6.4 of the Notes to the consolidated financial statements. Management is of the opinion that these were material
items that, due to their exceptional nature, cannot be regarded as inherent to the Group's ordinary activities.
Our work involved examining the elements making up these amounts and assessing the appropriateness, in the light of Recommendation
R 2013-03 of the French National Accounting Board (
Conseil National de la Comptabilité CNC
), of their presentation in the Consolidated
income statement and of the disclosures in Note 6 of the Notes to the consolidated financial statements.
•
your company is committed to acquiring the shares held by shareholders of certain consolidated subsidiaries, should the latter wish
to exercise their put options. In the absence of any specific provision under IFRS on this subject, we have verified that the accounting
treatment applied and described in the section entitled Liabilities related to put options granted to non-controlling interests in Note
3.1 of the Notes to the consolidated financial statements was compliant with the principles of IFRS as adopted by the European Union
and currently in effect.
We also reviewed the methods adopted by your company for the valuation of the debt recognized in connection with these put options
based on the information available to date. We have verified that Note 3 of the Notes to the consolidated financial statements contains
appropriate information on these put options and on the assumptions used by your company.
•
your company performed at the reporting date an impairment test on goodwill and brands with indefinite useful life as described in Notes
9.1 and 9.3 of the Notes to the consolidated financial statements, and also assessed whether there was any indication of impairment
of associates and of other tangible and intangible assets, in accordance with the procedures described in Notes 4.1, 4.4 and 5.5 of the
Notes to the consolidated financial statements. We have reviewed the procedures for identifying indications of impaired value and for
implementing the impairment test of these assets, and verified that Notes 4.4, 4.7 and 9.3 give appropriate information, in particular in
relation to the assumptions adopted and the sensitivity analysis in respect of goodwill, brands with indefinite useful life and associates.
As indicated in Note 1.1 of the Notes to the consolidated financial statements, the valuation of intangible assets and associates was
based on estimates prepared in accordance with information and circumstances existing on the date the financial statements were
drawn up. Such estimates may differ from the actual amounts.
These assessments were made as part of our audit of the consolidated financial statements taken as a whole, and therefore contributed
to the opinion we formed, which is expressed in the first part of this report.