Our results suggest that ownership structure of firms plays an important role in
determining cash holdings of UK companies. Our findings reveal a non-monotonic relationship between managerial ownership and cash holdings. We find that cash
holdings first fall as managerial ownership increases up to 24%, possibly suggesting
that the alignment effects of managerial ownership dominate the entrenchment effects.
Then, cash holdings rise as managerial ownership increases to 64%, then falls
at higher levels of managerial ownership. This nature of the relationship does not
seem to change significantly with either the firm’s board composition or the presence
of ultimate controllers. In addition, we provide evidence that firms controlled by
families hold higher levels of cash and marketable securities.