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...