Abstract
This study explores the potential effect of Chief Financial Officers’ (CFOs’) generalist career experience on firm cash holdings using a sample of UK listed firms during the period of 1999−2019. Our baseline results confirm that firms with more generalist CFOs opt for more cash holdings compared to firms with less generalist CFOs due to their willingness to engage in risk taking through more investment with internal finance, which is consistent with the upper echelon theory. Interestingly, we show that female non-executive independent directors negatively moderate the relationship between generalist CFO and firm cash holdings. Our results are consistent with different robustness checks. Overall, our results suggest that CFO generalist career experience is an importance attribute and highlight the importance of gender composition of the board in curbing excessive risk taking.