Does CFO Gender Matter in Corporate Cash Holdings? Evidence from an Emerging Country

Jonghyuk Bae, Kunsu Park, Ziyi Wang, Yunbing Huang, Ziyun Gu and Yanxuan Li

Emerging Markets Finance and Trade, 2025, vol. 61, issue 3, 750-772

Abstract: This study examines whether CFO gender is associated with corporate cash holdings in the context of China, one of the largest emerging market countries. We find that firms with female CFOs have more cash holdings than those with male CFOs. Next, we find that the positive relationship between female CFOs and cash holdings is less pronounced in firms with high financial leverage than those with low financial leverage. We further find that the negative moderating effect of financial leverage on the relationship between female CFOs and cash holdings is stronger for firms with a lower presence of female board members. Our main result is robust to an alternative measure of cash holdings and endogeneity concerns. This study provides meaningful implications for developing and emerging market countries by elucidating the relationship between female CFOs and cash holdings. The empirical evidence can also help shareholders and bondholders better understand the female CFO—cash holdings nexus in light of financial leverage and the presence of female board members. We examine whether CFO gender is associated with corporate cash holdings in the context of China.We find that firms with female CFOs have more cash holdings than those with male CFOs.We find that the positive relation between female CFOs and cash holdings is less pronounced for firms with high financial leverage than those with low financial leverage.We further find that the negative moderating effect of financial leverage on the relation between female CFOs and cash holdings is stronger for firms with a lower presence of female board members.Our study provides meaningful implications for developing and emerging market countries by shedding light on the relation between female CFOs and cash holdings.Our empirical evidence can also help shareholders and bondholders better understand the female CFOs-cash holdings nexus in light of financial leverage and the presence of female board members.

Date: 2025
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DOI: 10.1080/1540496X.2024.2399526

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