I did ask and receive a reply from Sam about this back in Feb 2017. I was curious why the acquisition did not result in any new asset coming onto the balance sheet.
He said:
Now I just found this note from the 2017 annual results:
So they used the "pooling of interest" method. I never heard of this, but here's a little I can find from this article:
And then I found more nuance on the supposed "discontinuation" of this as a method from ey.com. I guess it still can be used for "common control" situations:
The biggest issue I see is this: do they have more companies that they will acquire from themselves in the future?