Large powerful shareholders and cash holding

Ronald Anderson and Malika Hamadi

No 7291, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research

Abstract: We study the relationship between liquid asset holding and the pattern of share ownership and control structures within the firm. We explore these issues using a data set of Belgian firms that is particularly well suited to studying the institutions of control oriented finance. The data include information on ownership concentration, voting alliances, managerial ownership, membership in family groups, institutional cross-share holdings, and coordination centers which under Belgian law permit consolidation of earnings and cash flow for a group of firms. We show that financial structures in Belgium are strongly control oriented as evidenced by the very high levels of observed ownership concentration and the prevalence of pyramids, voting alliances, and participation in family groups. We find that the level of liquid asset holding is positively associated with ownership concentration and that this effect is particularly marked for family firms. Given the difficulties of family firms in achieving effective wealth diversification we interpret these results as indicating liquid asset holding is largely motivated by risk aversion. Cash holding is negatively associated with institutional cross share holdings, suggesting that these cross holdings facilitate an effective internal capital market. We find little evidence that managers have an independent influence on cash holdings.

Keywords: Corporate governance; Family firms; Liquid assets (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C23 G32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP7291 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:7291

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP7291

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CEPR ().