Minority Interest essays

Minority Interest essays The term minority interest in the balance sheet of Eastman Kodak appears in the balance sheet as reported by all the major sources. The term is used with a meaning not common in most other applications. In the financial world, the term minority is normally used to mean a group of shareholders who are not associated with the group who are running the company. Often enough this group is just interested in the dividends and other benefits that they can get from the company. Some companies also give large and regular dividends, and this stops the price of the share from increasing very much. These shares are termed in the stock market as "widow's shares" as a person can depend on them for regular income. However, any share will normally declare a dividend, as that is seen as one of the obligations of the managers of the company. The dividend normally does not yield as much as fixed deposits in financial institutions as the shareholder can earn much more through the appreciation of the share price and selling it when the prices are high after having bought the share when the prices were low. This is the expected action of the "investors". In the case of Eastman Kodak, the term minority interest is shown against the declaration under the heading of liabilities, but not under current liabilities, and along with mortgages, deferred taxes/income, convertible debt, long term debt, non-current capital leases, and other non-current liabilities. In short this is viewed as a long term liability to the minority shareholders. The important point to note is that the figure for this has been shown as N/A for the year ended 31st December 2003, whereas for all earlier years from 1999, this has been shown as 0. The total number of shares outstanding is also not shown. Is it be...