In the year 2005 it became mandatory for listed companies in the EU to apply IFRS in their consolidated financial statements. The purpose of IFRS is to create harmonization and to facilitate the comparison of financial statements between countries for investors. Previous studies have shown that the application of regulation has not been harmonized which prevents comparability and creates a significant barrier between companies in different countries. The issue of harmonization was found in, among other, the accounting of acquisitions. Acquisitions have increased with globalization of the financial markets and have been an important driving force in development. This increased importance of acquisitions has led to higher demands on the companies’ published financial information, which resulted in the new accounting standard IFRS 3. This study seeks to analyze how companies in the United Kingdom and Germany account for acquisitions and how they differ between them. It also seeks to compare the countries with previous research from Sweden, and investigate how the influence of supervision affects their accounting.

This study concludes that there are some differences in the accounting between the United Kingdom and Germany, but that these differences were not as great as perceived. Between Germany and Sweden there were significant differences despite the fact that they share the same historical accounting. The biggest discovery was that all countries relation between goodwill and intangible assets is becoming centralized. The supervision of companies is also a factor that seems to have a bigger impact in Sweden’s accounting than in Germany and the United Kingdom. The supervision does not explain the difference between Germanys and Swedens accounting.