AIFS Case Finance in a Global Environment Rochester Institute of Technology Group 4 Mengjie Ban Liu Gu Danielle Sherwood Bill Speight Mohamed Waheed Summary The American Institute for Foreign Study, also known as AIFS, is a student exchange organization that specializes in academic and cultural exchange programs for both college and high school students. The AIFS was founded by Sir Cyril Taylor in 1964, in the United States, and is split into two divisions: the Study Abroad College division, based in London, and the High School Travel Division, based in Boston. Christopher Archer-Lock and Becky Tabaczynski, are the controller and CFO for the college and high school divisions, respectively. Approximately 50,000 …show more content…
There are three types of risk that AIFS faces with respect to currencies: bottom-line risk, volume risk, and competitive pricing risk. Bottom-line risk is defined as “the risk that an adverse change in the exchange rates could increase the cost base”. Volume risk is the risk of having too much or too little of the currency based on the fact that projected sales will be different than the actual sales. The third type of risk is competitive pricing risk and is the fact that AIFS cannot change its prices even if the currencies are changing for fear of losing their customers. In order to manage, or ultimately minimize, these risks, AIFS uses currency hedging techniques. Hedging activities begin approximately six months before the prices are due for the catalogs for the college division. For the high school division, the hedging took place throughout the year: 25% by December, 40% by the end of March and 100% by June when the pricing for the catalog is due. Problem Statement AIFS wants to offset any change in the exchange rates that may adversely affect their profit margins by using currency forward contracts and currency options. These hedging activities work to offset the three types of risk defined above as bottom-line risk, volume risk, and competitive pricing risk. Since these hedging activities must be put in place two years before the actual year of sales, AIFS must decide the proportion and cost
The goal of this case is to help Sandra Meyer develop a presentation to address Henry Bosse’s concerns about international investments. The general idea is to demonstrate to Henry the benefits of international diversification, if any. To achieve this goal, you need to have a view on 1) the impact of foreign exchange (FX) rates on the return and risk of international investments, and 2) the impact of having more assets on the return and risk of the investment portfolio To form views on these two points, answer the following questions: I. The impact of FX rates on the risk and return of foreign investments 1a) Using data in Appendix A, calculate the
The Balance of Payments in India mainly relies on services exports, remittances and the course capital flows, both foreign direct investments (FDI) and FII. It is very essential that all market participants, such as banks and other intermediaries be provided with the wherewithal so that they can undertake a risk management in a way that is scientific. One of the ways to access domestic, foreign exchange markets is to hedge on the underlying foreign exchange exposures. In addition, the facilities that are available as the booking of forward contracts were included in the domestic forex market in order to evolve and acquire volumes and depth (Sumanth, 2012). Some of the newer hedging instruments have put in place swaps and options in the
2) Minimize the cost associated with the foreign exchange risk management strategy, i.e. the management and hedging costs
The current 50% hedging policy executed at the fund level has served well for OTPP for the past ten years, contributing to the fund’s positive returns. The FX Hedge Program not only has minimized the downside risk, but has also limited the upside potential. If OTPP decided not to implement a hedging program in 1996, they would have lost about $983 million CAD over the ten year period (1995-2005) which is valued at 2% of the portfolio. With the hedging program, OTPP was able to reduce the overall loss to about $469 million CAD, but also limited the gain from the depreciation of the pound.(Exhibit 1) Hedging is an excellent short-term risk minimizing strategy for long term investors, sustaining a continual payout of pensions during volatile times in OTPP’s invested currency markets. Currently, approximately 21% of OTPP’s net assets are exposed to foreign currency risk. Consequently, it is essential that OTPP maintain a risk management program of hedging, as slight currency fluctuations can significantly affect the value of the fund. Similarly to continual renewal of swaps, hedging can be a very expensive risk management strategy.
From class, translation risk comes from the translation of the value of the asset from the foreign currency to the domestic currency. When the Punt/US$ exchange rate changes, Universal Circuits’ assets, liabilities, revenues, and expenses have to be recalculated and restated.
General Motors Corporation, the world’s largest automaker, has an extensive global outreach, which places the firm in competition with automakers worldwide, and subjects itself to significant exchange rate exposure. In particular, despite most of its revenues and production being derived from North America, depreciating yen rates pose problems for the firm indirectly through economic exposure. While GM possesses ‘passive’ hedging strategies for balance sheet and income statement exposures, management has not yet quantified or recognized solutions to possible losses from the indirect competitive exposure it now shared with Japanese automakers in the U.S import
There are lots of methods to solve the changes in foreign currency and interest rates issue, however, derivative financial instruments are the major tunes Nike enterprise has used to tackle this issue. Despite the fact that this approach does not wipe out comprehensively the risk of foreign exchange, Nike enterprise still utilize it to minimize or delay the negative consequences. Specifically, the derivative financial instruments comprise embedded derivatives, interest rate swap, and foreign exchange forwards and options contracts (Nike annual report, 2014).
The United States has always been a main attraction for international students to gain intellectual knowledge, technical skills, cross-cultural experience, and better opportunities for professional development (Han, Han, Luo, Jacobs, & Jean-Baptiste, 2013; Zhang & Goodson, 2010). According to the Institute of International Education (2017), in the academic year of 2015/2016, there was an increase of 7% in the number of international student pursuing higher education in the United States over the previous year with total international students of 1,043,839 and 5.2% representing the total of U.S College enrollment. International students make higher education one of the largest service sector exports in the United States (Rice, Choi, Zhang, Morero, & Anderson, 2012; Zhang & Goodson, 2010). They are regarded as a vital financial commodity for countries
* Square 1 shows low sales volume (10000) with strong USD that when the company is out of money (1.01USD/EUR). AIFS has an excess of currency. In this case, if it locked into surplus forward contracts then it would lose money. So the option
Given the nature of its business, Jaguar is faced with three types of exchange rate exposure (1) Transaction, (2) Translation and (3) Economic . Transaction exposures arise whenever the firm commits (or is contractually obligated) to make or receive a payment at a future date denominated in a foreign currency. Translation exposures arise from accounting based changes in consolidated financial statements caused by a change in exchange rates. In this case we primarily focus on the Economic exposure -also known as Operating exposure or Competitive exposure- of Jaguar.
AIFS is an American based company that offers travel abroad and exchange study services to both college and high school students. While AIFS’s revenues are denominated in American Dollars (USD), most of their costs are in foreign currencies as Euros (EUR) and British Pounds (GBP). Consequently, foreign exchange hedging has a crucial importance for the company because it provides protection against different types of risk that derive from its activity.
This report is created with a discussion over several important international finance topics for instance, interest-rate parity, currency risk management, regarding description on Carrefour S.A. financing policies as well as hedging strategy. Additionally, we also discussed on which currency Carrefour should issue its 10-year, 750 million euro, annual coupon bond, its foreign currency risk exposure and a possible hedging decision in dealing with any or all of the identified risks.
Current Strategy. The company has been hedging the US dollar long position by estimating its annual US dollar sales and hedging that exposure by purchasing put options on the US dollar (the right to sell US dollars for euros at a specific exchange rate). The company has been purchasing these options in what it refers to as a “three-year rolling hedge” in which it hedges expected US dollar sales three years out
It is best to prepare a strategic plan for currency exposure of Bose products, due to the transactions risk faced by companies involved in international trade. Completing financial obligations after a trade has been made will decrease the currency and fluctuations of exchange rates. This involves the exposure of assets, stocks and the sensitivity of asset return within the corporation.
• Financial management effort: To minimize the risk of exchange-rate fluctuation and transactions processes of export activity the financial management needs more capacity to cope the major effort