Promotional Profit, the profit appropriated by the promoters of a joint-stock company. It is the difference between the sum total of the prices of the shares (see Stock [Share]) issued by the promoters and the sum of the capital actually invested by them in the company. It is a product of the difference between the nominal and the market price of the shares. The latter price usually exceeds the nominal price at which the promoter originally issued the share. Even if the share is sold at its nominal price the promoters make a profit by “watering” the capital, i. e., issuing shares for a total far in excess of the really invested capital. In this case, the source of the promotional profit is part of the money capital of the ordinary stockholders. Another technique of acquiring this kind of profit is keeping part of the original shares in the hands of the promoters until their market price increases. The promoters of the largest jointstock companies are representatives of the top monopoly bourgeoisie. Therefore appropriation of promotional profit has become a major way for the financial oligarchy to enrich itself. Lenin noted that "it is characteristic of capitalism in general that the ownership of capital is separated from the application of capital to production" (V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 22, p. 238). This process, which underlies the growth of promotional profit, has attained a tremendous scale under modern imperialism. As a result, promotional profit has become a major tool of redistributing surplus value to benefit the monopolies and ensuring monopoly superprofit.