As China’s shadow banking sector expands, the impact of listed companies’ involvement in financial stability and the real economy accumulates increasing attention. Despite being a crucial channel for non-financial firms to participate in shadow banking, the literature has given limited consideration to the acquisition of wealth management products (WMPs). Using data from Chinese listed firms between 2007 and 2020, we analyze how excessive equity financing affects companies’ WMP acquisitions. Our findings indicate that over-financing significantly boosts WMP purchases among these firms, particularly in cases of private ownership, raised environmental uncertainty, and strict financing constraints.

This study investigates the impact of ultimate government ownership or control on the cost of debt of Chinese listed corporations. We first examine the relative level of cost of debt of corporations under government control compared to corporations under individual or family control. We then explore circumstances under which government control is likely to reduce a corporation’s cost of financing. Our results suggest that the benefits of government control are conditional on firm-specific financial circumstances and internal- and external-corporate governance environment. We find that, on average, government controlled corporations have lower cost of debt but the effect is not homogeneous. Government controlled corporations have lower cost of debt when they are highly financially constrained and have higher risk of being expropriated by controlling shareholders and in provinces where the local government is less effective, but not otherwise.