Determinants of corporate cash holdings of public listed companies in Malaysia / Nur Nabilah Sukry

The purpose of this paper is to understand the motives behind the levels of cash holdings and the theory that may be able to explain why these firms hold so much cash. Annual financial data and stock prices of 34 firms from different sectors on the Bursa Malaysia are collected for the period 2010-2015. The variables used in this study are growth opportunities, firm size, cash flow volatility and leverage for independent variables; and cash holdings for dependent variable. In the "Malaysian Business" magazine, lists the cash holdings of individual Malaysian listed companies which amount to billions of ringgits. This indicates that there are huge levels of cash in Malaysian firms, but whether these figures are optimal for the firms is not known. The large cash holdings of these firms naturally bring to the fore the question of why the firms hold these large hoards of cash when cash is a non-interest/return generating asset.