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4.2 FINANCIAL STATEMENTS OF DANONE SA, THE DANONE PARENT COMPANY
Statutory auditors' report on the financial statements of the parent company Danone
DANONE
REGISTRATION DOCUMENT 2015
164
STATUTORY AUDITORS' REPORT ON THE FINANCIAL STATEMENTS
OF THE PARENT COMPANY DANONE
This is a free translation into English of the Statutory auditors' report on the 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 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 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 management
report and in the documents addressed to the shareholders. 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,
Pursuant to the assignment entrusted to us by your Shareholders' Meeting, we hereby report to you, for the year ended December 31, 2015, on:
•
the audit of the accompanying financial statements of Danone;
•
the justification of our assessments;
•
the specific verifications and information required by law.
These financial statements have been approved by the Board of Directors. Our role is to express an opinion on these financial statements
based on our audit.
I. Opinion on the financial statements
We conducted our audit in accordance with professional standards applicable in France; those standards require that we plan and perform
the audit to obtain reasonable assurance that the 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 annual 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 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 financial statements give a true and fair view of the assets and liabilities and of the financial position of the Company
as of December 31, 2015, and of the results of its operations for the year then ended in accordance with French accounting principles.
II. Justification of our assessments
In accordance with the provisions 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:
•
the section
Financial assets
in Note 1 of the Notes to the financial statements of the parent company Danone describes the methods for
accounting for equity interests as well as the methods used to calculate impairment losses. We performed sample tests to confirm
that these methods were applied correctly and we reviewed the methods used to determine the amount of the impairment losses.
We have assessed the data and assumptions on which these estimates are based: as indicated in Note 1 of the Notes to the financial
statements of the parent company Danone, these estimates were prepared in accordance with information and circumstances existing
on the date the financial statements were drawn up and such estimates may differ from the actual amounts.
•
as stated in Note 18 of the Notes to the financial statements of the parent company Danone, your company or some of its direct or indirect
subsidiaries have undertaken to acquire the shares held by third-party shareholders in certain companies in which your company has
a direct or indirect stake should such shareholders wish to exercise their put option. We reviewed the methods used by your company
to calculate these financial commitments based on the information currently available. We have assessed the data and assumptions
on which these estimates are based and the resulting valuations.
These assessments were made as part of our audit of the parent company financial statements taken as a whole, and therefore contributed
to the opinion we formed, which is expressed in the first part of this report.