GARP Risk Review

Without question, the adoption of FAS 133 will have an impact on the way firms use derivatives. One application that will certainly be affected is the use of currency swaps in conjunction with funding in a currency other than the functional currency. In the past, synthetic instrument accounting ruled. Under that regime, the accounting did not distinguish between issuing fixed rate debt directly and using derivatives to achieve the same goal. In certain cases, the synthetic instrument result may still be achieved, or at least approximated; but not always.