You know how you and your friends all like to play Call of Duty and watch YouTube videos of people putting cucumbers near cats? These Areas of Mutual Interest are different from the one we have in mind. But it's not really all that different.
Actually, it’s more like how you and your roommates all need to pitch in to clean the kitchen.
In a financial context, the term gets used most often to describe an oil and gas project where multiple companies have a stake. The place where the drilling (or whatever is going on to get the oil and gas out of the ground) happens is termed the "area of mutual interest." A contract dictates what stake each company has in the project and what their responsibilities entail. Much like how you have to clean the dishes, while Lindsay scours the oven and Alex has to clean out the freezer.
