Ownership structure about relation between leverage and
cash is as follows: Jensen and Meckling (1976) assert
that the agency cost between the shareholder and manager
are mitigated as ownership of the firm’s manager
increases, since ownership tends to align the priorities of
management with shareholders. Based on this story, if
accumulation of cash by management is a form of agency
cost, then one would expect that cash levels would
decrease with those variables that proxy for agency cost
mitigation. Faulkender (2004) find a negative relationship
between cash holdings and firm ownership in small firms.
However, Opler et al. (1999) find no relationship between
managerial ownership and cash holdings, though their
sample concentrated on larger firms. For small firms with
few shareholders who may have a close family with the
firm, monitoring could be very effective. We expect that
there will be a negative relationship between managerial
ownership and cash holdings.