Foreign exchange risk management in UK, USA and Asia Pacific multinational companies

The objective of this paper is to simultaneously survey the foreign exchange risk practices of large UK, USA and Asia Pacific multinational companies (MNCs). It investigated whether foreign exchange risk management practices vary internationally, including for the first time a large sample Asia Pacific MNCs. From 179 (30%) usable responses it is shown that there are statistically significant regional differences in the importance and objectives of foreign exchange risk management, the emphasis on translation and economic exposures, the internal/external techniques used in managing foreign exchange risk and the policies in dealing with economic exposures. In general, UK and USA MNCs have similar policies, with a few notable exceptions, however, Asian Pacific MNCs display significant differences. To control for regional variations in the characteristics of respondents the results are also compared by size, percentage of overseas business and industry sector. It was found that either the size of the respondent or the industry sector could also explain the emphasis on translation and economic exposure and use of external hedging instruments. © 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. JEL classification: F23; F31