Whose firm? Resilience of the German corporate sector to financialization.

This article examines the progression of financialization in the German nonfinancial corporate sector from 2000 to 2020, focusing on firms listed in Germany's largest stock indices, DAX and MDAX. It identifies a significant rise in ownership by international passive asset managers—termed "ownership financialization"—but finds no corresponding increase in their control over firms, which remains dominated by business families holding large blockholdings. While executive compensation increasingly includes equity grants, reflecting a shift toward shareholder value orientation (SVO), German firms do not exhibit rising share buybacks or payout rates; instead, they retain a growing share of earnings internally. This "save-and-sit-on-it" regime contrasts with the U.S. "downsize-and-distribute" model and is shaped by Germany's coordinated market economy features, including codetermined supervisory boards and the influence of business families, which together limit the extent of corporate financialization despite liberalizing governance reforms.