Financialization and Corporate Performance in China: Promotion or Inhibition?

Using a sample of Chinese listed firms for the period 2009 to 2018, we analyze the relationship between the financialization of non‐financial corporations (NFCs) and corporate performance from both long‐term and short‐term perspectives. Our results show that the impact of financialization on firm performance is not simply a crowding‐out or pulling effect but rather depends on the type of financial assets held by the firms. The holdings of investment financial assets generally have a pulling effect on both the short‐term performance and market expectations of a firm's future profits as proxied by Tobin's Q, but they crowd out the innovation activities that are critical to long‐term performance. Although monetary financial assets positively affect corporate profitability, they inhibit the increase of return on invested capital and long‐term performance. Additionally, compared with monetary financial assets, investment financial assets play a more important role in promoting short‐term performance, although the crowding‐out effect on innovation activities is more prominent for investment financial assets. Furthermore, this paper also concludes that compared with manufacturing and non‐state‐owned enterprises (NSOEs), the role of financialization in promoting the performance of non‐manufacturing and state‐owned enterprises (SOEs) is more significant.