Various methods have been proposed as solutions to preparing consolidated financial statements for non-wholly owned subsidiaries. Provide the methods and include your reasoning to support the method(s) that is/are being adopted under IFRS.

There are four methods that have been put forward for the preparation of financial statements under circumstances where the subsidiary is non-wholly owned and they are:
a) The Proportionate Consolidation method
b) The Parent Company method
c) The Identifiable Net Assets (INA) method
d) The Fair Value Enterprise (FVE) method

The methods that were adopted under IFRS were both the Identifiable Net Assets method and the Fair Value Enterprise method. Both methods view the consolidated entity as having two distinct groups of shareholders: the controlling shareholders and the non-controlling shareholders.

Under the FVE method, all values are reflected at fair value of the subsidiary's identifiable net assets with the balance recorded as goodwill and allocated proportionately to both the parent and NCI. For the INA method, it values both the parent's share and the NCI's share of identifiable net assets at fair value; however, only the parent's share of the subsidiary's goodwill is brought onto the consolidated statements at the value paid by the parent. This addresses the concern that it is very difficult to measure goodwill when the parent does not purchase 100% of the subsidiary with the result that the NCI's portion of the subsidiary's goodwill is not measured and not brought onto the consolidated statements.

In addition, both methods represent a departure from the historical cost basis that has been used by accountants in the past as objective and verifiable. But the reality is that fair value of each party constitutes their participation in the entity. And arguably with a transaction having occurred in the shares of the subsidiary each of the participants should have their participation re-valued at current market prices or valuations and not historical cost.