In accounting terms, after all liabilities are paid, ownership equity is the remaining interest in assets. If valuations placed on assets do not exceed liabilities, negative equity exists.

At the start of a business, owners put some funding into the business to finance assets. Businesses can be considered to be, for accounting purposes, sums of liabilities and assets; this is the accounting equation. After liabilities have been accounted for, the positive remainder is deemed the owner's interest in the business.

This definition is helpful when a business is not paying its bills and gets liquidated, wound up, put into receivership or bankruptcy. Then, a series of creditors, ranked in priority sequence, have the first claim on the proceeds (e.g. asset sales), and ownership equity is the last or residual claim against assets, paid only after all other creditors are paid. In such a case, creditors may not get enough money to pay their bills, and nothing is left over to reimburse owners' equity. Thus owners' equity is reduced to zero. Ownership equity is also known as risk capital, liable capital and equity.

When the owners are shareholders, the interest can be called shareholders' equity; the accounting remains the same, although shareholders may allow different priority ranking among themselves by the use of share classes, and options. This complicates both analysis for stock valuation, and accounting.

Equity Capital

Equity capital is the amount of capital provided by the company's owner(s). This differs from debt capital which requires business owners to pay interest and principal payments to the debt financier at set intervals. Providing new equity (an "issuance" of new equity) gives the firm new capital and increases owners' equity by the same amount and time needed. An issuance of new shares, to raise new capital, increases shareholders' equity. Formally, owners' equity is also a form of liability, but is deemed separate and different from other liabilities since it is a residual interest, ranked last in the series; equity is generally considered to be an asset.

Real Estate Equity

Individuals can also use market valuations to calculate equity in real estate. An owner refers to his or her equity in a property as the difference between the market price of a property and the liability attached to the property (mortgage or home equity loan).