International Financial Management: Exchange Rate Exposure revisited: The exchange rate exposure of the largest European corporations from 1994 to 2010

Seminar paper from the year 2011 in the subject Business economics - Business Management, Corporate Governance, grade: 1,7, University of Groningen ("-"), course: Advanced International Financial Management, language: English, abstract: Various studies have shown that exchange rate exposure is empirically lower for US multinationals than theory predicts. We examine this discrepancy for the largest Eurozone companies from 1994 till 2010 where the introduction of the Euro could have led to significant exposure reduction. Furthermore, we examine the relationship between exchange rate exposure and transnationality which is a novelty to date. We find that few European multinationals seem to have a significant exchange rate exposure and surprisingly the overall risk profile of transnational companies is lower which indicates that the risk from exchange rate exposure is more than compensated by risk reducing effects resulting from a high degree of transnationality.