Aspen Technology, Inc. Currency Hedging Review

This case shows us that apart from transaction, translation and economic exposure to currency risk, firms also have the very real strategic impact on their competitive position from competitive exposure. Apart from GM’s exposure to the yen which is reflected in their financial statements, their competitive position vis-à-vis Japanese manufacturers is affected by a potentially declining yen. This is because a declining yen reduces the Japanese manufacturers’ $ cost, enabling them to pass on some of the benefit to US customers and thus taking some of GM’s market share. This will impact GM’s top and bottom line. However, GM has a difficult decision regarding managing this risk.

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

With the development of multinational companies, financial risk has played an increasingly remarkable role in financial market. In order to overmaster interest risk, currency and price risks, multinational corporates tend to hedge their exposure to financial risk. In practice, Coca-Cola Company has charged its business for a period of one century and made it as one of the principal players in the beverage industry. Coca-Cola Company markets have 500 non-alcoholic beverage brands in more than 200 countries. The essay discuss the pros and cons of hedging and analysis the financial statement of Coca-Cola. Eventually, hedging is a reasonable secession in risk management for multinational companies.

* Exchange rates may affect profitability on the business if they are sourcing materials (all the ingredients used to

Through the Abbreviated Operational Organization Chart, Exhibit 8, Universal Circuit’s Operations are divided in two: the United States and Ireland. Due to the fact that the Irish operations are directly linked to the US parent company, it would make sense that the Irish subsidiary has the US dollar as their functional currency. Furthermore, if we suppose that all expenses were indeed in punts, the Irish subsidiary would then be exposed to a higher degree of both economic and translation risk. This being said, the Irish subsidiary’s profits would be

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).

This case explores the operating exposure of Jaguar PLC in 1984, just as the government is about to relinquish control and take the company public via an IPO. The primary concern of the CFO is that Jaguar sells over 50% of its cars in the US, while its production costs and factories are U.K.-based. This currency mismatch creates operating exposure for the firm that needs to be hedged.

Due to the geographic diversity of countries where BHP Billiton has extended to, the variation of foreign exchange rate obviously plays a crucial role on its financial performance. According to the annual report of BHP Billiton (2015), US dollar is not only the functional currency utilized in majority of sales and transaction, but also the presentation

* Refer sheet “10000 Sales” for cost incurred and Gain/loss for AIFS for different scenarios and actual sales volume of 10000.

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.

Exhibit 7 from the case study describes the currency development in medium term of the GBP and EURO against the dollar. We can observe that the currencies are exposed to high volatility, which means the company may register greater risk

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.

1) What are Aspen Technology’s main exchange rate exposures? How does Aspen Tech’s business strategy give rise to these exposures as well as to the firm’s financing need?

Not doing so could decrease Aspen’s growth abroad. While Aspen could reduce its foreign exchange exposure by reducing the amount of installment payments or by using other methods, this may not sit well with their current customers who may in turn reduce orders and find other suppliers in order to reduce the risk or the heavy costs that Aspen’s choices would leave with them. Because foreign exchange risk is a core risk for Aspen and has been managed fairly well until this point, we see no reason for them to overhaul their business model and risk alienating their customers.