VIII. Risk Management 27. Managing Risk
CHAPTER 27 Managing Risk 777
Firms use a number of tools to hedge:
1. Futures contracts are advance orders to buy or sell an asset. The price is fixed to-
day, but the final payment does not occur until the delivery date. The futures
markets allow firms to place advance orders for dozens of different commodi-
ties, securities, and currencies.
2. Futures contracts are highly standardized and are traded in huge volumes on the
futures exchanges. Instead of buying or selling a standardized futures contract,
you may be able to arrange a tailor-made contract with a bank. These tailor-made
futures contracts are called forward contracts. Firms regularly protect themselves
against exchange rate changes by buying or selling forward currency contracts.
Forward rate agreements (FRAs) provide protection against interest rate changes.
3. It is also possible to construct homemade forward contracts. For example, if you
borrow for two years and at the same time lend for one year, you have effec-
tively taken out a forward loan.
4. In recent years firms have entered into a variety of swap arrangements. For exam-
ple, a firm may arrange for the bank to make all the future payments on its fixed-
rate debt in exchange for paying the bank the cost of servicing a floating-rate loan.
Instead of using derivatives for hedging, some companies have decided that spec-
ulation is more fun, and this has sometimes gotten them into serious trouble. We do
not believe that such speculation makes sense for an industrial company, but we cau-
tion against the view that derivatives are a threat to the financial system.
FURTHER
READING
Two general articles on corporate risk management are:
C. W. Smith and R. M. Stultz: “The Determinants of Firms’ Hedging Policies,” Journal of Fi-
nancial and Quantitative Analysis, 20:391–405 (December 1985).
K. A. Froot, D. Scharfstein, and J. C. Stein: “A Framework for Risk Management,” Journal of
Applied Corporate Finance, 7:22–32 (Fall 1994).
Schaefer’s paper is a useful review of how duration measures are used to immunize fixed liabilities:
S. M. Schaefer: “Immunisation and Duration: A Review of Theory, Performance and Appli-
cations,” Midland Corporate Finance Journal, 3:41–58 (Autumn 1984).
The texts that we cited in the readings for Chapter 20 cover futures and swaps as well as options.
There are also some useful texts that focus on futures and swaps. They include:
D. Duffie: Futures Markets, Prentice-Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1989.
D. R. Siegel and D. F. Siegel: Futures Markets, Dryden Press, Chicago, 1990.
C. W. Smith, C. H. Smithson, and D. S. Wilford: Managing Financial Risk, 3rd ed., McGraw-
Hill, Inc., New York, 1998.
The Metallgesellschaft debacle makes fascinating reading. The following three papers cover all sides
of the debate:
C. Culp and M. H. Miller: “Metallgesellschaft and the Economics of Synthetic Storage,”
Journal of Applied Corporate Finance, 7:62–76 (Winter 1995).
F. Edwards: “The Collapse of Metallgesellschaft: Unhedgeable Risks, Poor Hedging Strat-
egy, or Just Bad Luck?” Journal of Futures Markets, 15:211–264 (May 1995).
A. Mello and J. Parsons: “Maturity Structure of a Hedge Matters: Lessons from the
Metallgesellschaft Debacle,” Journal of Applied Corporate Finance, 7:106–120 (Spring 1995).
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