According to Opler et al. (1999), managers might wish to protect
their human capital with a cash buffer due to risk aversion. Thus, a
positive relationship exists between managerial ownership and
cash holdings. On the other hand, managers like to pursue their
own objectives at the expenses of shareholders. One way to control
the agency problem between managers and shareholders is to
increase manager’s equity ownership, which allows managers and
shareholders to share the same goals. Under this incentivealignment
effect, a negative relationship exists between managerial
ownership and cash holdings (Ozkan and Ozkan, 2004). Thus, the
relationship between cash holdings and managerial ownership is
ambiguous.