To VINCI’s Shareholders’ General Meeting,
In accordance with our appointment as Statutory Auditors by the shareholders at the Shareholders’ General Meeting, we have audited the accompanying parent company financial statements of VINCI for the year ended 31 December 2021.
In our opinion, the parent company financial statements for the year give a true and fair view of the financial position, the assets and liabilities, and the results of the Company, in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles in France.
The opinion formulated above is consistent with the content of our report to the Audit Committee.
We conducted our audit in accordance with professional standards applicable in France. We believe that the information that we collected provides a sufficient and appropriate basis for our opinion.
Our responsibilities under those standards are stated in the “Responsibilities of the Statutory Auditors in relation to auditing the parent company financial statements” section of this report.
We conducted our audit, in accordance with the independence rules laid out in the French Commercial Code (Code de commerce) and in the code of conduct of the statutory audit profession in France, between 1 January 2021 and the date on which we issued our report, and in particular we did not provide any services forbidden by Article 5, paragraph 1 of Regulation (EU) 537/2014.
The global crisis caused by the Covid-19 pandemic created a particular environment for the preparation and auditing of financial statements for the year. The crisis and the exceptional public health emergency measures have had multiple consequences for companies, impacting their business and financing in particular and increasing uncertainty about their future prospects. Some of these measures, such as travel restrictions and remote working, have also affected companies’ internal organisation and how audits are conducted.
In this complex and changing environment, as required by Articles L.823-9 and R.823-7 of the French Commercial Code relating to the justification of our assessments, we inform you of the key audit matters, relating to what were, in our professional judgment, the main risks of material misstatement in relation to our audit of the year’s parent company financial statements, and our responses to those risks.
Those assessments were made in the context of our audit of the parent company financial statements taken as a whole and in the formation of our opinion stated above. We do not provide a separate opinion on specific items of the parent company financial statements.
At 31 December 2021, the net carrying amount of investments in subsidiaries and affiliates was €26,262 million, equal to 56% of total assets.
They are recognised on the balance sheet at their acquisition cost. Where that cost is greater than the asset’s value in use, an impairment allowance is taken equal to the difference, as an exceptional item. Value in use is determined on the basis of the portion of the equity represented by the investments. This portion is adjusted, if necessary, according to the cash flow forecasts of the relevant companies.
Given the extent of the investments in subsidiaries and affiliates on the balance sheet and their sensitivity to changes in the data and assumptions on which Management bases its estimates when determining cash flow forecast adjustments, particularly in the context of uncertainty surrounding macroeconomic outlooks as a result of the Covid-19 health crisis, we took the view that assessing the value in use of investments in subsidiaries and affiliates was a key audit matter that presented a risk of material misstatement.
For investments in subsidiaries and affiliates that are material or present a specific risk, we:
