Although the concept of ‘financialization’ has become increasingly popular across a wide range of social sciences, it is largely excluded from the discourse of financial economists. The objective of this paper is to provide the basis for its incorporation in academic finance. This first involves removing the existing meta-theoretical obstacles to the acceptation of the concept in the discipline. We then connect financialization with the concomitant development of cyberspace, the global deregulation of financial markets, and the rise of shareholder governance. We identify a corresponding set of changes in the financial and the real sectors, which we support with a series of stylized facts, and situate within current literature. Finally, we put forth a list of relevant research questions for the study of financialization in the context of academic finance.