What is water sharing?

Answer 1

Shares of stock that are issued at a value in excess of a company's actual assets are known as watered stock. The term arose many decades ago when a par value was assigned to shares of stock by the board of directors. The par value was correlated by many investors to the actual asset value per share of a company since companies could not sell additional stock below the stated or par value. Dishonest stock promoters would deceptively assign a high par value in order to sell overvalued or watered shares to investors. Due to investor confusion and misuse by shady stock issuers legislation was passed to allow stock to be issued at no par value. Once used as a metric of stock valuation, the term par value has little meaning for present day investors.