Financialization of Non-financial Corporations: A New Framework with Cases from South Africa

Abstract

Financialization shapes the ways in which middle-income countries and their non-financial corporations integrate into global value chains and the global financial system. This integration, in turn, shapes the ways in which these corporations engage with financialization. Focusing on large listed non-financial corporations, this article unpacks these dynamics. It advances an integrated analytical framework to facilitate an exploration of financialization sources and processes that are specific to the middle-income country context, and that emerge and operate across micro, meso and macro levels. The authors identify financialization sources related to different types of profits and rents, and articulate financialization processes through which value is extracted. The framework is then applied to three case studies of non-financial corporations across different sectors in South Africa, a middle-income country undergoing premature deindustrialization and financialization: Sasol in chemicals, Shoprite in retail, and MTN in information and communication technology. The analysis reveals three main elements that are characteristic of middle-income economies and their subordinate position within the global hierarchies of production and finance: (1) rents feature strongly as a financialization source; (2) the need to attract foreign capital and manage external vulnerabilities shapes financialization processes; and (3) extracted value is primarily channelled abroad.