The American Institute For Foreign Study

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

Hedging is a significant measure of financial risk management. Since the 1970s, the increasing number of powerful companies started to control the risk of the exchange rate, the interest rate and commodity by using financial derivatives. ISDA (2013) based on the Global 500 Annual Report 2012 survey found that 88 percent of companies use foreign exchange derivatives. Modigliani & Miller (1958) believed that if the financial markets were under perfect conditions, for instance, there was no agency costs, asymmetric information, taxes and transaction costs, hedging would not increase the company 's value because investors can hedge by themselves. However, a large number of practical studies have shown that hedging is beneficial

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.

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

* AIFS organizes educational and cultural exchange programs throughout the world. AIFS receives most of its currencies in American dollars (USD but it incurs costs in other currencies mainly in Euros (EUR) and Pounds (GBP).

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.

Nestlé S.A. is a Swiss company and owns a prestigious position being the world’s leading nutrition, health and wellness group (Nestlé, 2016). According to its annual report (2015), this company is exposed to many risks caused by movements in foreign currency exchange rates, interest rate and market prices. The foreign exchange risk comes from transactions and translations of foreign operations in Swiss Francs (CHF). The interest rate risk faces the borrowings at fixed and variable rates. The market price risk comes from commodity price and equity price. The former risk arises from world commodity market for the supplies of coffee, cocoa beans, sugar and others. The later risk arises from the fluctuations of the prices of investments held. (Nestle annual reports, 2015). Thus, financial derivatives instruments are used by this multinational corporation in order to hedge these 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

Hedging can be defined as a risk management mechanism or strategy which is used to prevent the chances of incurring losses which arise as a result of fall in prices commodities or currencies. It is a technique which is majorly used by the investors in protecting their capital against the effects of the economic situations such as inflation whereby the investors invests in the high yield financial instruments or take a position to cushion them against such effects (Investopedia, 2012).

Scout Finch is the Chief Financial Officer [CFO] of Dayton Manufacturing, a U.S. based manufacturer of gas turbine equipment. She has just concluded negotiations for the sale of a turbine generator to Crown, a British firm for One million pounds. This single sale is quite large in relation to Dayton’s present business. Dayton has no other current foreign customers, so the currency risk of this sale is of particular concern. The sale is made in March with payment due three months later in June. Scout Finch has collected the following financial market information for the analysis of her currency exposure problem:           Spot Exchange rate: $1.7640 per British pound.

Great Eastern Toys is a company in Hong Kong that exports a huge percent of its total sales to the North American and European markets and hence is exposed to currency risk. Previously, the company was occupied with expanding their business and the company 's management had never given much attention to currency risk until their recent meeting with their banker. The banker pointed out that the depreciation of the European currencies during the previous two years had resulted in a substantial loss of income. The company 's management was indeed convinced that they should begin to devote more time and manage their currency position. In this report, we are going to explore the different options for Great Eastern Toys to hedge