EXERCISE 1: Vegas Corp. is a U.S. firm that exports most of its products to Canada. It historically invoiced its products in Canadian dollars to accommodate the importers. However, it was adversely affected when the Canadian dollar weakened against the U.S. dollar. Since Vegas did not hedge, its Canadian dollar receivables were converted into a relatively small amount of U.S. dollars. After a few more years of continual concern about possible exchange rate movements, Vegas called its customers and requested that they pay for future orders with U.S. dollars instead of Canadian dollars. At this time, the Canadian dollar was valued at $.81. The customers decided to oblige since the number of Canadian dollars to be converted into U.S. dollars when importing the goods from Vegas was still slightly smaller than the number of Canadian dollars that would be needed to buy the product from a Canadian manufacturer. Based on this situation, has transaction exposure changed for Vegas Corp.? Has economic exposure changed? Explain.
EXERCISE 2:
Assume the euro’s spot rate is presently equal to $1.00. All of the following firms are based in New York and are the same size. While these firms concentrate on business in the U.S., their entire foreign operations for this quarter are provided here.
Company A expects its exports to cause cash inflows of 9 million euros and imports to cause cash outflows equal to 3 million euros.
Company B has a subsidiary in Portugal that expects revenue of 5 million euros and has expenses of 1 million euros.
Company C expects exports to cause cash inflows of 9 million euros and imports to cause cash outflows of 3 million euros, and will repay the balance of an existing loan equal to 2 million euros.
Company D expects zero exports and imports to cause cash outflows of 11 million euros.
Company E will repay the balance of an existing loan equal to 9 million euros.
Which of the five companies described here has the highest degree of translation exposure?