Exposure to currency risk by US multinational corporations

Despite evidence that large US multinational corporations are hedging their exchange rate risk exposure, existing literature on the measurement of exchange rate risk does not give us a tool to measure the effect of such hedging activities of multinational firms. This paper revisited the measurement of exchange rate risk exposure using the cumulative translation adjustment as a trade-weighted dollar index faced by individual companies. We find that especially small multinational firms are exposed to foreign exchange risk and benefit from a weakening in the international value of the US dollar. The results also indicate that hedging activities by large firms are not so effective to eliminate exchange risk. Two industries in particular show a highly significant relation between changes in the cumulative translation account and equity returns, however, with an opposite sign, i.e. positive for electrical equipment and negative for primary metals.     

Using survey data to resolve the exchange risk exposure puzzle: Evidence from U.S. multinational firms

This paper examines the effect of unexpected exchange rate movements on U.S. shareholder wealth. Empirical results based on a sample of 634 U.S. multinational firms (1) confirm previously reported evidence that the disaggregation of the worldwide trade-weighted U.S. dollar exchange rate index into seven region-specific trade-weighted indices increases the precision and significance of exposure estimates; (2) show that models assuming that changes in spot exchange rates are unanticipated are frequently misspecified and, thus, unable to correctly detect the impact of currency movements on firm value; (3) reveal that forward and survey expectations enable us to distinguish between the effect of ‘realized’ and ‘unexpected’ currency movements; and (4) reveal that investors making pricing and hedging decisions prefer to use the information contained in short-term forward and survey expectation rates to the information included in long-term forecasts.     

The Global CAPM and a Firm's Cost of Capital in Different Currencies

In an integrated global market, a firm's cost of capital expressed in one currency should be consistent with its cost of capital expressed in another currency. This article presents and illustrates a process for estimating consistent costs of capital in different currencies for a U.K. based multinational. In so doing, it uses a simple, easy-to-use version of the global CAPM that attempts to incorporate the effect of uncertain exchange rates by calculating exchange rate "betas." As argued in the previous article, at least part of a company's currency exposure is systematically related to the global market and thus should be treated as a component of the firm's systematic equity risk.
For example, the U.K. firm featured in this article is shown to have an exchange rate beta of 0.20 from the perspective of a U.S. investor. This implies that a 10% return on the global market in U.S. dollars tends to be associated with a 2% change in the U.S. dollar value of the British pound. One interesting consequence of incorporating exchange risk in this fashion is that two firms with identical U.S. global betas and costs of equity will have different expected returns expressed in another currency if they have different exposures to that currency.     

Exchange Rate Exposure of Exporting and Importing Firms

Although economic theory and conventional wisdom suggest that U.S. multinationals and export-oriented firms are adversely affected by a strengthening dollar and benefit from a depreciating dollar, the research to date provides little evidence of any relationship between FX changes and the stock prices of such firms. The authors propose a "dual-effect" hypothesis that distinguishes between (1) the direct competitive effect of currency induced changes on the effective price to consumers of the firm's products and (2) an indirect effect stemming from the generally positive correlations between currency levels and the strength of the domestic economy. Thus, for example, while a strong dollar hurts exports, it also tends to be associated with a strong domestic market and higher domestic sales. For this reason, the net effect on exporters of a stronger dollar could be close to zero. On the other hand, a weak dollar tends to have a "doubly" negative effect on importers because of higher import prices and the associated weakness of the local economy. For this reason, importers—in contrast to exporters—are likely to have significant exposures to currency fluctuations.
Consistent with these arguments, the authors' econometric analysis reveals a significantly positive currency exposure for importers and insignificant exposure for exporters, based on correlations between stock returns and currency changes. But when the benchmark is non-exporting domestic firms instead of a marketwide index (which contains exporters), a stronger currency is associated with a significantly negative effect on exporters.     

Exchange Rate Exposure at the Firm and Industry Level

Previous work on the exposure of firms to exchange rate risk has primarily focused on U.S. firms and, surprisingly, found stock returns were not significantly affected by exchange‐rate fluctuations. The equity market premium for exposure to currency risk was also found to be insignificant. In this paper we examine the relation between Japanese stock returns and unanticipated exchange‐rate changes for 1,079 firms traded on the Tokyo stock exchange over the 1975–1995 period. Second, we investigate whether exchange‐rate risk is priced in the Japanese equity market using both unconditional and conditional multifactor asset pricing testing procedures. We find a significant relation between contemporaneous stock returns and unanticipated yen fluctuations. The exposure effect on multinationals and high‐exporting firms, however, is found to be greater in comparison to low‐exporting and domestic firms. Lagged‐exchange rate changes on firm value are found to be statistically insignificant implying that investors are able to assess the impact of exchange‐rate changes on firm value with no significant delay. The industry level analysis corroborates the cross‐sectional findings for Japanese firms in that they are sensitive to contemporaneous unexpected exchange‐rate fluctuations. The co‐movement between stock returns and changes in the foreign value of the yen is found to be positively associated with the degree of the firm's foreign economic involvement and inversely related to its size and debt to asset ratio. Asset pricing tests show that currency risk is priced. We find corroborating evidence in support of the view that currency exposure is time varying. Our results indicate that the foreign exchange‐rate risk premium is a significant component of Japanese stock returns. The combined evidence from the currency exposure and asset pricing analyses, suggests that currency risk is priced and, therefoe, has implications for corporate and portfolio managers.     

Does multinationality matter? Implications of operational hedging for the exchange risk exposure

An important issue in global corporate risk management is whether the multinationality of a firm matters in terms of its effect on exchange risk exposure. In this paper, we examine the exchange risk exposure of US firms during 1983–2006, comparing multinational and non-multinational firms and focusing on the role of operational hedging. Since MNCs and non-multinationals differ in size and other characteristics, we construct matched samples of MNCs and non-multinationals based on the propensity score method. We find that the multinationality in fact matters for a firm’s exchange exposure but not in the way usually presumed – the exchange risk exposures are actually smaller and less significant for MNCs than non-multinationals. The results are robust with respect to different samples and model specifications. There is evidence that operational hedging decreases a firm’s exchange risk exposure and increases its stock returns. The effective deployment of operational risk management strategies provides one reason why MNCs may have insignificant exchange risk exposure estimates.     

Oil Currency and the Dollar Standard: A Simple Analytical Model of an International Trade Currency

The U.S. dollar is the central reference currency for international trade pricing and the main invoicing currency for primary commodities. This paper links these two observations within a stylized theoretical framework, and shows how to obtain a quantitative estimate of the gain to the U.S. economy when the dollar is a reference currency. With dollar invoicing of primary commodities, U.S. firms bear less exchange rate risk than foreign firms. This asymmetry leads to a dollar standard in international goods pricing. We then derive a simple analytical formula to calculate the gains and find that they are extremely small.     

Foreign exchange exposure: Evidence from the U.S. insurance industry

We study the foreign exchange exposure of U.S. insurers. The evidence shows that no systematic difference exists in the currency risk profiles of life and non-life segments within the insurance industry. This suggests that life and non-life insurers have similar risk exposure management strategies arising from similar risk pooling and financial intermediary functions. The empirical results reveal that a sizable proportion of U.S. insurers are exposed to foreign exchange movements against the seven largest U.S. trade partners in insurance services (U.K., Japan, Switzerland, Netherlands, France, Germany and Canada). Significant operational and size effects are also documented and we find that the frequency of foreign exchange exposure increases with time horizon.     

Countercyclical currency risk premia

We describe a novel currency investment strategy, the ‘dollar carry trade,’ which delivers large excess returns, uncorrelated with the returns on well-known carry trade strategies. Using a no-arbitrage model of exchange rates we show that these excess returns compensate U.S. investors for taking on aggregate risk by shorting the dollar in bad times, when the U.S. price of risk is high. The countercyclical variation in risk premia leads to strong return predictability: the average forward discount and U.S. industrial production growth rates forecast up to 25% of the dollar return variation at the one-year horizon. The estimated model implies that the variation in the exposure of U.S. investors to worldwide risk is the key driver of predictability.     

Valuation effects of international stock exchange listings

A comprehensive data set consisting of 346 U.S. firm stock listings on ten different stock exchanges is examined in order to determine the valuation consequences of listing on a foreign stock exchange. For the sample of U.S. firms listing abroad, abnormal returns in U.S. trading were: (1) positive around the date of acceptance on the foreign exchange; (2) negative on the first trading day; and (3) negative in the post-listing period for firms listing on the Tokyo and Basel exchanges. Tests for the equality of stock return variances between event periods and market model estimation periods failed to reveal a definitive impact.     

Exchange rate exposure in the Asian emerging markets

This paper investigates the impact of foreign exchange rate change on stock returns in the Asian emerging markets. The asymmetric exchange exposure framework and real exchange rates are used in this paper to capture the different exposures between currency appreciation and depreciation and the high inflation effect in the emerging markets. My empirical results show that there did exist extensive exchange rate exposure in the Asian emerging markets from 1997 to 2010. Moreover, foreign exchange exposure became more significant or greater during the 1997 Asian crisis and the 2008 global crisis periods, despite the frequent central banks’ interventions during these periods. The greater exchange exposure during the crisis periods can be attributable to net exporters or firms with dollar assets, implying that firms can reduce exchange exposures by decreasing their export ratio or dollar assets holding during times of crisis.     

The use of foreign currency derivatives and firm market value

This article examines the use of foreign currency derivatives(FCDs) in a sample of 720 large U.S. nonfinancial firms between1990 and 1995 and its potential impact on firm value. UsingTobin's Q as a proxy for firm value, we find a positive relationbetween firm value and the use of FCDs. The hedging premiumis statistically and economically significant for firms withexposure to exchange rates and is on average 4.87% of firm value.We also find some evidence consistent with the hypothesis thathedging causes an increase in firm value.     

Unconditional and conditional exchange rate exposure

We re-examine the relationship between exchange rate movements and firm value. We estimate the exchange rate exposure of U.S. firms to two currency indices. Firms are clustered into eleven industries. The sample includes exporters and non-exporters. Using a panel approach, we uncover statistically significant and sizable unconditional exposure. We also examine the dynamics of exchange rate exposure modeled as a function of business cycle indicators and firm characteristics. We find that exposure varies over time with macroeconomic and financial variables and increases during economic contractions. Deviations from the unconditional measure of exposure driven by the macroeconomic variables are economically meaningful.     

Foreign issuers in the U.S. PIPE market

We document that the use of private investment in public equity (PIPE) by foreign firms listed on U.S. exchanges is growing even faster than its use by U.S. firms. On average, foreign firm PIPE stock deals represent a similar proportion of the firm's market capitalization to U.S. firm PIPEs, but suffer less of a share price discount than U.S. firm PIPE issuances, a relation that is robust to consideration of exchange, deal size, share turnover and return volatility. We document that hedge funds are only small investors in foreign firm PIPEs issued in the U.S., which tend to be purchased by pensions, government funds and corporations. PIPE, in combination with the reverse merger method of going public, provides a cost-effective means for foreign firms to raise capital in the U.S. capital market.     

Effects of business diversification on asset risk-taking: Evidence from the U.S. property-liability insurance industry

We investigate the effect of line-of-business diversification on asset risk-taking in the U.S. property-liability industry. The coordinated risk management hypothesis (Schrand and Unal, 1998) implies a negative relation between underwriting risk and investment risk. Consistent with this hypothesis we find that diversified insurers take more asset risk than non-diversified insurers, and that the degree of asset risk-taking is positively related to diversification extent. Our results are robust to corrections for potential endogeneity bias, selectivity bias, and alternative diversification and asset risk measures. We also provide event study evidence that further supports the coordinated risk management hypothesis. Specifically, we find that when a focused firm diversifies, it increases its asset risk relative to firms that remain focused, and when a diversified firm refocuses, it reduces its asset risk relative to firms that remain diversified.     

Corporate risk management and firm value: evidence from the UK market

The paper evaluates the effect of corporate risk management activities on firm value, using a sample of large UK non-financial firms. Following recent changes in financial reporting standards, we are able to collect detailed information on risk management activities from audited financial reports. This enables us to gain a better understanding of risk management practices and to investigate value implications of different types of hedging. Overall 86.88% of the firms in the sample use derivatives to manage at least one type of price risk. The hedging premium is statistically and economically significant for foreign currency derivative users, while we provide weak evidence that interest rate hedging increases firm value. The extent of hedging and the hedging horizon have an impact on the hedging premium, whereas operational risk management activities do not significantly influence the market value of the firm.     

美元贬值和石油价格变动相关性的实证分析

进入新世纪以来,由于各种因素导致美元不断贬值,与此形成鲜明对比的是,石油价格一路飙升。那么,美元汇率和石油价格之间是否存在着某种因果关系呢?由于期货市场具有价格发现功能。本文以最具代表性的美国纽约商品交易所的原油期货价格为研究对象,分析美元贬值和石油价格之间的关系。本文首先定性分析美元贬值导致石油价格上涨的传导机制,然后利用模型对相关数据进行实证分析。研究结果表明,石油期货价格的上涨,除了有美元指数的影响之外,更重要的原因是前期石油期货价格上涨对本期石油期货价格上涨有正向的推动作用。     

The exchange rate exposure of U.S. and Japanese banking institutions

In this paper, we examine the foreign exchange exposure of a sample of U.S. and Japanese banking firms. Using daily data, we construct estimates of the exchange rate sensitivity of the equity returns of the U.S. bank holding companies and compare them to those of the Japanese banks. We find that the stock returns of a significant fraction of the U.S. companies move with the exchange rate, while few of the Japanese returns that we observe do so. We next examine more closely the sensitivity of the U.S. firms by linking the U.S. estimates cross-sectionally to accounting-based measures of currency risk. We suggest that the sensitivity estimates can provide a benchmark for assessing the adequacy of existing accounting measures of currency risk. Benchmarked in this way, the reported measures that we examine appear to provide a significant, though only partial, picture of the exchange rate exposure of U.S. banking institutions. The cross-sectional evidence is also consistent with the use of foreign exchange contracts for the purpose of hedging.     

Exposure,hedging, and value: New evidence from the U.S. airline industry

For a variety of reasons, the U.S. airline industry is a natural sample to analyze the relation between corporate risk exposure, hedging policy, and firm value. First, we find that airline exposures to fuel prices are higher when fuel prices are high or when they are rising. Second, we analyze the relation between exposure coefficients and the percentage of next year's fuel requirement hedged by airlines. In response to higher fuel price levels, rising fuel prices, and higher levels of exposure to fuel prices, airlines tend to increase their hedging activity. Finally, we explore the previously documented jet fuel hedging premium illustrated in Carter, Rogers, and Simkins (2006). We find a positive hedging premium in our analysis; however, the interaction of hedging and exposure does not affect firm value. We conclude that airlines increasing hedging activity because of higher fuel price exposure are not valued higher compared to those airlines employing more stable hedging policies.