Nathan Lael Joseph

The choice of hedging techniques and the characteristics of UK industrial firms

Abstract This study presents the empirical results for the relationship between the use of hedging techniques and the characteristics of UK multinational enterprises (MNEs). All the firms in the sample hedge foreign exchange (FX) exposure. The results indicate that UK firms focus on a very narrow set of hedging techniques. They make much greater use of derivatives than internal hedging techniques. The degree of utilisation of both internal and external techniques depends on the type of exposure that is hedged. Furthermore, the characteristics of the firms appear to explain the choice of hedging technique but the use of certain hedging techniques appears to be associated with increases in the variability of some accounting measures. This adverse impact of hedging has not been emphasised in the finance literature. The results imply that firms need to ensure that the appropriate techniques are used to hedge exposures.

The emergence of integrated private reporting

Purpose - – This paper aims to provide evidence to suggest that private social and environmental reporting (i.e. one-on-one meetings between institutional investors and investees on social and environmental issues) is beginning to merge with private financial reporting and that, as a result, integrated private reporting is emerging. Design/methodology/approach - – In this paper, 19 FTSE100 companies and 20 UK institutional investors were interviewed to discover trends in private integrated reporting and to gauge whether private reporting is genuinely becoming integrated. The emergence of integrated private reporting through the lens of institutional logics was interpreted. The emergence of integrated private reporting as a merging of two hitherto separate and possibly rival institutional logics was framed. Findings - – It was found that specialist socially responsible investment managers are starting to attend private financial reporting meetings, while mainstream fund managers are starting to attend private meetings on environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues. Further, senior company directors are becoming increasingly conversant with ESG issues. Research limitations/implications - – The findings were interpreted as two possible scenarios: there is a genuine hybridisation occurring in the UK institutional investment such that integrated private reporting is emerging or the financial logic is absorbing and effectively neutralising the responsible investment logic. Practical implications - – These findings provide evidence of emergent integrated private reporting which are useful to both the corporate and institutional investment communities as they plan their engagement meetings. Originality/value - – No study has hitherto examined private social and environmental reporting through interview research from the perspective of emergent integrated private reporting. This is the first paper to discuss integrated reporting in the private reporting context.

The sensitivity of US banks' stock returns to interest rate and exchange rate changes

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of foreign exchange and interest rate changes on US banks’ stock returns. Design/methodology/approach -The approach employs an EGARCH model to account for the ARCH effects in daily returns. Most prior studies have used standard OLS estimation methods with the result that the presence of ARCH effects would have affected estimation efficiency. For comparative purposes, the standard OLS estimation method is also used to measure sensitivity. Findings - The findings are as follows: under the conditional t-distributional assumption, the EGARCH model generated a much better fit to the data although the goodness-of-fit of the model is not entirely satisfactory; the market index return accounts for most of the variation in stock returns at both the individual bank and portfolio levels; and the degree of sensitivity of the stock returns to interest rate and FX rate changes is not very pronounced despite the use of high frequency data. Earlier results had indicated that daily data provided greater evidence of exposure sensitivity. Practical implication - Assuming that banks do not hedge perfectly, these findings have important financial implications as they suggest that the hedging policies of the banks are not reflected in their stock prices. Alternatively, it is possible that different GARCH-type models might be more appropriate when modelling high frequency returns. Originality/value - The paper contributes to existing knowledge in the area by showing that ARCH effects do impact on measures of sensitivity.

Stochastic volatility and the goodness-of-fit of the Heston model

Recently, Drăgulescu and Yakovenko proposed an analytical formula for computing the probability density function of stock log returns, based on the Heston model, which they tested empirically. Their research design inadvertently favourably biased the fit of the data to the Heston model, thus overstating their empirical results. Furthermore, Drăgulescu and Yakovenko did not perform any goodness-of-fit statistical tests. This study employs a research design that facilitates statistical tests of the goodness-of-fit of the Heston model to empirical returns. Robustness checks are also performed. In brief, the Heston model outperformed the Gaussian model only at high frequencies and even so does not provide a statistically acceptable fit to the data. The Gaussian model performed (marginally) better at medium and low frequencies, at which points the extra parameters of the Heston model have adverse impacts on the test statistics.

Institutional Investors' Views on Corporate Governance Reform: Policy Recommendations for the 21st Century

Growing interest in UK corporate governance has engendered research on specific issues of corporate governance reform. However, there seems to be little research on the more general impact of recent reforms in corpora questionnaire survey to investigate: (i) UK institutional investorss general attitudes towards recent corporate governance reforms; (ii) whether UK institutional investors consider specific corporate governance initiatives to be of equal importance, and; (iii) whether all institutional investors represent a homogeneous group with respect to corporate governance reform. The empirical results indicate that institutional investors: (i) have generally welcomed the recent reforms; (ii) do not consider that specific corporate governance initiatives are equally important but attach more relevance to initiatives aimed at monitoring the principal/agent problem, and; (iii) may be treated as a homogeneous group, except in relation to voting policy, where pension funds appear more pro-active in their approach than other groups.

Testing for overreaction and return continuations in stock price index returns

In this paper, the authors examine the impacts of large price changes (or shocks) on the abnormal returns (ARs) of a set of 39 national stock indices. Their initial results support returns continuations for both positive and negative shocks in line with prior results. After controlling for market size, their findings provide support for over-reaction, return continuations and market efficiency, but these result depend on the magnitude of the price shocks. Whilst the market is efficient when the positive shocks are large, the market also over-reacts when negative shocks are large. To illustrate, for large stock markets that are more liquid, positive shocks of more than 5% generate an insignificant day one CAR of -0.004%, whilst negative shocks of more than 5% generate a positive and significant day one CAR of 0.662%. In contrast, positive (negative) shocks of less than 5% generate a significant one day CAR of 0.119% (-0.174%) for these same (large) stock markets.

Using monthly returns to model conditional heteroscedasticity

This empirical study examines the extent of non–linearity in a multivariate model of monthly financial series. To capture the conditional heteroscedasticity in the series, both the GARCH(1,1) and GARCH(1,1)–in–mean models are employed. The conditional errors are assumed to follow the normal and Student– t distributions. The non–linearity in the residuals of a standard OLS regression are also assessed. It is found that the OLS residuals as well as conditional errors of the GARCH models exhibit strong non–linearity. Under the Student density, the extent of non–linearity in the GARCH conditional errors was generally similar to those of the standard OLS. The GARCH–in–mean regression generated the worse out–of–sample forecasts.

Pricing-to-market using EGARCH-error correction model

In this paper, the authors use an exponential generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedastic (EGARCH) error-correction model (ECM), that is, EGARCH-ECM, to estimate the pass-through effects of foreign exchange (FX) rates and producers’ prices for 20 U.K. export sectors. The long-run adjustment of export prices to FX rates and producers’ prices is within the range of -1.02% (for the Textiles sector) and -17.22% (for the Meat sector). The contemporaneous pricing-to-market (PTM) coefficient is within the range of -72.84% (for the Fuels sector) and -8.05% (for the Textiles sector). Short-run FX rate pass-through is not complete even after several months. Rolling EGARCH-ECMs show that the short and long-run effects of FX rate and producers’ prices fluctuate substantially as are asymmetry and volatility estimates before equilibrium is achieved.

Predicting returns in U.S. financial sector indices

This study focuses on: (i) the responsiveness of the U.S. financial sector stock indices to foreign exchange (FX) and interest rate changes; and, (ii) the extent to which good model specification can enhance the forecasts from the associated models. Three models are considered. Only the error-correction model (ECM) generated efficient and consistent coefficient estimates. Furthermore, a simple zero lag model in differences which is clearly mis-specified, generated forecasts that are better than those of the ECM, even if the ECM depicts relationships that are more consistent with economic theory. In brief, FX and interest rate changes do not impact on the return-generating process of the stock indices in any substantial way. Most of the variation in the sector stock indices is associated with past variation in the indices themselves and variation in the market-wide stock index. These results have important implications for financial and economic policies.

Which Corporate Hedging Motives Are Appropriate? An Institutional Shareholders' Perspective

This note presents some empirical evidence on the hedging motives that institutional investors consider to be appropriate for firms. Our results indicate that in some cases, the views of institutional investors are similar to those of the treasury managers of UK multinational companies (MNCs). However, we found other important cases where the views of institutional investors differ from the hedging practices of firms. For example, institutional investors place a strong degree of importance on the hedging motive that is associated with financial distress. This result contrasts with earlier evidence from MNCs themselves. Our findings have important implications for theoretical work that is associated with agency considerations and the extent to which the firm communicates its financial policies to investors. Copyright @ 2000 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. All rights reserved.