ABSTRACT
Globalisation of finance capital has become a burning topic since the financial crisis of 2008. Earlier, financial services were confined to banks, which used to mobilise savings and allocate them to different projects after evaluation. However, after the expansion of the financial sector under the neo-liberal policies, financial services displayed that the financial sector was adopting an increasingly dominant posture in a global economy, and together with a parallel slide of fortunes in the real economy, has caused a contraction of real investment. This chapter will attempt to analyse the change in the firm portfolio and financing behaviour of non-financial corporations in India since 1991, using firm level data from the CMIE Prowess database for the period 1990 to 2014. The chapter critically examines the relationship between financialisation and investment and explores the fixed investment behaviour of non-financial corporations in India since 1991. The study shows that the concentration of financial assets and rentier income in terms of interest and dividend income went up dramatically between 2000 and 2014. The chapter also measures the proportion of financial earnings of NFCs to total earnings and proportion of cash out flow in financial activities to total cash out flow of corporations.
