Financial background of controlling shareholder and corporate financialization

This paper studies the effect of the controlling shareholder’s financial background on the corporate financialization. We find that controlling shareholder’s financial background has a significant positive impact on corporate financialization, and the positive impact is more obvious in credit advantage firms and firms with poor institutional environment and real investment environment. Firms with financial controlling shareholders will increase long-term value reserving financial investment, and firms’ financialization trend with lower financing constraints is more sensitive to controlling shareholders’ financial background, suggesting that speculating is the essential motivation of firms’ financialization, rather than precautionary saving. The mechanism test shows that controlling shareholder’s financial background mainly promotes corporate financialization by increasing the financial long-term equity investments at the parent company level. Finally, there is an inverted U relationship between corporate financialization and investment efficiency, and the marginal effect of corporate financialization on investment efficiency is greater in firms with financial shareholders.