Mediating Role of Financialization and Intellectual Capital in the Relationship Between Ownership Structure and Firms’ Financial Performance

ABSTRACT This paper investigates how intellectual capital (IC) and financialization mediate the relationship between ownership structure (OS) and the financial performance (FP) of manufacturing companies listed on the Iranian stock exchange from 2016 to 2022. OS is analyzed through three variables: institutional ownership (IO), ownership concentration (OC), and managerial ownership (MO). IC and financialization are considered as mediating variables, with firms’ FP as the dependent variable. This research was conducted due to a sample of 112 listed companies and employs artial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS‐SEM) for data evaluation. The results reveal that both IO and OC positively impact FP, whereas MO negatively affects FP. Furthermore, IC and financialization mediate the relationships between OC and MO with FP. However, these mediating factors do not affect the relationship between IO and FP.