171
Independent Auditor’s Report
Description of responsibilities regarding the Financial Statements
Introduction
M.J. van der Vegte
Amsterdam, February 15, 2022
Deloitte Accountants B.V.
Management is responsible for preparing the Annual Report, including the financial statements in accordance
with the RTS on ESEF, whereby management combines the various components in a reporting package.
Our responsibility is to obtain reasonable assurance for our conclusion whether the Annual Report in this reporting
package, is in accordance with the requirements. We have taken into consideration what is stated in Alert 43.
Our procedures included:
- Obtaining an understanding of the HEINEKEN’s financial reporting process, including the preparation of the
reporting package;
- Obtaining the reporting package and performing validations to determine whether the reporting package
containing the Inline XBRL instance document and the XBRL extension taxonomy files have been prepared in
accordance with the technical specifications; and
- Examining the information related to the Consolidated Financial Statements in the reporting package to
determine whether all required tagging has been applied and whether they are in accordance with the RTS
on ESEF.
Responsibilities of the Executive Board and the supervisory board for the financial statements
The Executive Board is responsible for the preparation and fair presentation of the financial statements in
accordance with EU-IFRS and Part 9 of Book 2 of the Dutch Civil Code. Furthermore, the Executive Board is
responsible for such internal control as the Executive Board determines is necessary to enable the preparation of
the financial statements that are free from material misstatement, whether due to fraud or error.
As part of the preparation of the financial statements, the Executive Board is responsible for assessing the
company's ability to continue as a going concern. Based on the financial reporting frameworks mentioned, the
Executive Board should prepare the financial statements using the going concern basis of accounting unless the
Executive Board either intends to liquidate the company or to cease operations or has no realistic alternative but
to do so.
Our responsibilities for the audit of the financial statements
Our objective is to plan and perform the audit assignment in a manner that allows us to obtain sufficient and
appropriate audit evidence for our opinion.
Our audit has been performed with a high, but not absolute, level of assurance, which means we may not detect
all material errors and fraud during our audit.
Misstatements can arise from fraud or error and are considered material if, individually or in the aggregate, they
could reasonably be expected to influence the economic decisions of users taken on the basis of these financial
statements. The materiality affects the nature, timing and extent of our audit procedures and the evaluation of
the effect of identified misstatements on our opinion.
We have exercised professional judgement and have maintained professional scepticism throughout the audit, in
accordance with Dutch Standards on Auditing, ethical requirements and independence requirements. Our audit
included, among others:
The Executive Board should disclose events and circumstances that may cast significant doubt on the company's
ability to continue as a going concern in the financial statements.
The supervisory board is responsible for overseeing the company's financial reporting process.
Report of the
Executive Board
Report of the
Supervisory Board
Financial
Statements
Sustainability
Review
Other
Information
- Identifying and assessing the risks of material misstatement of the financial statements, whether due to fraud
or error, designing and performing audit procedures responsive to those risks, and obtaining audit evidence that
is sufficient and appropriate to provide a basis for our opinion. The risk of not detecting a material misstatement
resulting from fraud is higher than for one resulting from error, as fraud may involve collusion, forgery,
intentional omissions, misrepresentations, or the override of internal control.
- Obtaining an understanding of internal control relevant to the audit in order to design audit procedures that are
appropriate in the circumstances, but not for the purpose of expressing an opinion on the effectiveness of the
company's internal control.
- Evaluating the appropriateness of accounting policies used and the reasonableness of accounting estimates
and related disclosures made by management.
- Concluding on the appropriateness of management's use of the going concern basis of accounting, and based
on the audit evidence obtained, whether a material uncertainty exists related to events or conditions that may
cast significant doubt on the company's ability to continue as a going concern. If we conclude that a material
uncertainty exists, we are required to draw attention in our auditor's report to the related disclosures in the
financial statements or, if such disclosures are inadequate, to modify our opinion. Our conclusions are based on
the audit evidence obtained up to the date of our auditor's report. However, future events or conditions may
cause a company to cease to continue as a going concern.
- Evaluating the overall presentation, structure and content of the financial statements, including the disclosures.
- Evaluating whether the financial statements represent the underlying transactions and events in a manner that
achieves fair presentation.
Because we are ultimately responsible for the opinion, we are also responsible for directing, supervising and
performing the group audit. In this respect, we have determined the nature and extent of the audit procedures to
be carried out for group entities. Decisive were the size and/or the risk profile of the group entities or operations.
On this basis, we selected group entities for which an audit, review or other procedures had to be carried out on
the complete set of financial information or specific items.
We communicate with the supervisory board regarding, among other matters, the planned scope and timing
of the audit and significant audit findings, including any significant findings in internal control that we identified
during our audit. In this respect, we also submit an additional report to the audit committee in accordance with
Article 11 of the EU Regulation on specific requirements regarding statutory audit of public-interest entities.
The information included in this additional report is consistent with our audit opinion in this auditor's report.
We provide the supervisory board with a statement that we have complied with relevant ethical requirements
regarding independence, and to communicate with them all relationships and other matters that may reasonably
be thought to bear on our independence, and where applicable, related safeguards.
From the matters communicated with the supervisory board, we determine the key audit matters: those
matters that were of most significance in the audit of the financial statements. We describe these matters in our
auditor's report unless law or regulation precludes public disclosure about the matter or when, in extremely rare
circumstances, not communicating the matter is in the public interest.
Heineken N.V.
Annual Report 2021