Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to identify firms in the UK adopting a policy of high cash and low leverage and investigate how executive ownership contributes to this decision. Design/methodology/approach – Firms following this policy are identified both by using a fixed classification approach and the analysis of the distribution of cash and leverage. Logit analysis is then used to estimate the probability of adopting the policy as a function of executive ownership. Findings – Extreme financial policies are suboptimal as firms adopting these policies tend to undershoot (overshoot) their target leverage (cash holdings) ratios. The impact of the executive ownership on the probability of adopting this policy is U-shaped, in line with the alignment– entrenchment hypothesis. Practical implications – Despite the substantial presence of non-executive directors in the boards and a significant amount of shareholdings by executive directors, the firms under analysis have adopted suboptimal financial policies possibly because poorly governed or because executive ownership is the range where entrenchment is feasible. Originality/value – This is the first attempt at recognising policies of high cash and low leverage as being explicitly interdependent. It is also the first study focussing on the UK, a country of interest, because ownership structure is relatively dispersed. Moreover, instead of choosing fixed threshold levels of the variable in defining the extreme financial policy, this paper proposes the analysis of the distribution of cash holdings and leverage and accounts for target levels of cash and leverage.

Suboptimal Financial Policies and Executive Ownership in the UK: Evidence from a Pre-crisis.

Iona, Alfonsina
Primo
;
Leonida, Leone
Ultimo
2016-01-01

Abstract

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to identify firms in the UK adopting a policy of high cash and low leverage and investigate how executive ownership contributes to this decision. Design/methodology/approach – Firms following this policy are identified both by using a fixed classification approach and the analysis of the distribution of cash and leverage. Logit analysis is then used to estimate the probability of adopting the policy as a function of executive ownership. Findings – Extreme financial policies are suboptimal as firms adopting these policies tend to undershoot (overshoot) their target leverage (cash holdings) ratios. The impact of the executive ownership on the probability of adopting this policy is U-shaped, in line with the alignment– entrenchment hypothesis. Practical implications – Despite the substantial presence of non-executive directors in the boards and a significant amount of shareholdings by executive directors, the firms under analysis have adopted suboptimal financial policies possibly because poorly governed or because executive ownership is the range where entrenchment is feasible. Originality/value – This is the first attempt at recognising policies of high cash and low leverage as being explicitly interdependent. It is also the first study focussing on the UK, a country of interest, because ownership structure is relatively dispersed. Moreover, instead of choosing fixed threshold levels of the variable in defining the extreme financial policy, this paper proposes the analysis of the distribution of cash holdings and leverage and accounts for target levels of cash and leverage.
2016
File in questo prodotto:
File Dimensione Formato  
3137585.pdf

solo utenti autorizzati

Descrizione: Articolo principale
Tipologia: Versione Editoriale (PDF)
Licenza: Tutti i diritti riservati (All rights reserved)
Dimensione 382.94 kB
Formato Adobe PDF
382.94 kB Adobe PDF   Visualizza/Apri   Richiedi una copia
Pubblicazioni consigliate

I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.

Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11570/3137585
Citazioni
  • ???jsp.display-item.citation.pmc??? ND
  • Scopus 9
  • ???jsp.display-item.citation.isi??? 9
social impact