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This paper aims to develop hedging strategies using both futures and forward contracts and issuing risky debt when financially constrained firms are forced to operate in long horizon.

The authors present a model for developing hedging strategies using both futures and forward contracts and issuing risky debt. A theoretical model employing stochastic differential equations for forward hedging is illustrated with a numerical example over parameter values consistent with the literature.

A financially constrained firm with limited cash balance must hedge its liquidity with both future and forward contracts and issue risky debt to support its long-term operations. The firm can issue a minimal amount of risky debt by adding forward contracts into hedging and can increase its value higher than that when hedging with only futures contracts. We show numerically that hedging with both futures and forward contracts allows the firm to issue minimal risky debt in increasing its firm value.

When Metallgesellschaft nearly collapsed in 1993, it offered long-term forward contracts to its customers and attempted to hedge its risk by rolling over series of short-term futures contract. It created the situation of inherent mismatch in maturity structure. A financially constrained firm operating in a long horizon appears to commit its liquidity as long-term forward contracts, which cannot be fully hedged with series of futures contacts. The firm should hedge its liquidity with both futures and forward contracts and avoid liquidation with deadweight costs in its long-term operation.

This is the first study examining hedging strategies with both futures and forward contracts.

A futures contract may rely upon physical delivery or cash settlement to liquidate open positions at the maturity date. Contract settlement specification has direct impacts on the behavior of the futures price, leading to different effects of liquidity risk on futures hedging. This chapter compares such effects under alternative settlement specifications with a simple analytical model of daily price change. Numerical simulation results demonstrate that capital constraint reduces hedging effectiveness and tends to produce a lower optimal hedge ratio. As the futures contract proceeds toward the maturity date, hedgers will take larger hedge position in order to achieve better hedging effectiveness. Finally, optimal hedge ratios are higher (resp. lower) under cash settlement for the bivariate normal (resp. lognormal) assumptions, whereas hedging effectiveness is almost always greater under cash settlement.

This paper aims to assess the financial performance of firms that adopted or deferred the adoption of SSAP 20 “Foreign Currency Translation”. The focus of the study is to examine the impact of certain accounting issues, such as liquidity, hedging, foreign currency loans, managerial compensation, pre‐ and post SSAP 20 treatment of translation differences, etc, on the behaviour of firms.

The paper follows the positive accounting theory context and utilises parametric (logistic regression) and non‐parametric (Kruskal–Wallis test) tests to form and test theoretical hypotheses and relations between groups of firms with different financial characteristics.

The study provides evidence that the implementation of SSAP 20 has overall strengthened the financial position of adopters. Adopters that used different translation methods prior to adoption tend to exhibit different financial characteristics (e.g. higher leverage) in the pre‐actual adoption period. In contrast, they present no substantial differences in the actual adoption period. The findings show that adopters give priority to their stock market picture and tend to distribute higher dividend to their shareholders even if this leads to lower management payout.

Firstly, for the period under investigation, the availability of accounting and financial data and the disclosure of accounting information in the financial statements were to some extent limited. Secondly, it is difficult to see through managers’ inner intentions, and as a result managers’ behaviour and motives may not always be clear and conceivable to outsiders.

This study has significant implications for accounting standard setting bodies and investors. It provides insight about firms’ objectives and potential attitude and reaction to the issue of accounting regulation. This study also formulates the basis for studying firms’ behaviour and reaction with regard to other accounting standards and financial issues.

The purpose of this paper is to identify whether Latin American (LA) firms are adopting any hedging strategy when designing foreign exchange risk (FXR) measures. To that end, the authors explore the impact of several drivers of FXR management.

The sample consists of 342 non-financial listed firms established in a group of representative countries of the LA region and covers the period from 2008 to 2016. Hypothesis testing is performed through a Logit model that measures the likelihood to adopt hedging practices. In addition, a Tobit test offers further insights into the derivatives users.

The authors corroborate capital structure-related hypotheses such as tax goals, financial distress, liquidity and growth opportunities. In addition, both ownership concentration and income tax payable seem to be negative and significant determinants of FXR coverage.

Results reported in this study are relevant for the LA region with high tradition in raw materials and commodities exports. The results show that LA firms still make limited use of derivatives and there is still much room for improvement. Hence, additional efforts to promote FXR hedging should be desirable, to meet authorities’ recommendations (OECD et al., 2007). Further research exploring corporate governance relationships and differences between large and small firms might be helpful.

Este estudio tiene como objetivo identificar si las empresas Latinoamericanas (LA) están adoptando alguna estrategia de cobertura frente al riesgo de tipo de cambio (FXR). Para ello exploramos el impacto de varios determinantes de gestión de FXR.

La muestra está formada por 342 empresas del sector no financiero de un grupo representativo de países latinoamericanos y abarca el período 2008 a 2016. Para testar las hipótesis se aplican modelos Logit que miden la probabilidad de adoptar diferentes prácticas de cobertura. Adicionalmente, los resultados de la aplicación de un modelo Tobit ofrecen información extra sobre los usuarios de derivados.

Corroboramos las hipótesis relacionadas con la estructura de capital, tales como objetivos fiscales, dificultades financieras, liquidez y oportunidades de crecimiento. Además, tanto la concentración de propiedad como los impuestos sobre la renta por pagar parecen ser determinantes negativos y significativos de la cobertura de FXR.

Los resultados reportados en este estudio son relevantes para la región Latinoamericana con una gran tradición en exportaciones de materias primas y productos básicos. Nuestros resultados muestran que las empresas Latinoamericanas utilizan de manera limitada los derivados y todavía hay mucho por mejorar. Por lo tanto, es deseable la promoción de esfuerzos adicionales en cuanto a la cobertura de FXR para cumplir con las recomendaciones de las autoridades (OECD, 2007). Entre otras, serían de gran ayuda las investigaciones adicionales que exploren factores adicionales de Gobierno Corporativo (CG) así como profundizar en las diferencias entre empresas grandes y pequeñas.

This study aims to examine the effect of corporate derivatives use on firm value and how the corporate governance index modifies this relationship.

The sample consists of 219 nonfinancial firms on the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) from 2011 to 2019. The study used ordinary least square regression with year and industry dummies for estimations. Multiple estimation models such as fixed/random effect, Fama–MacBeth and two-stage least squares (2SLS) are used for robustness. Finally, the PROCESS macro tool is used to estimate the effect of moderating the role of corporate governance (CG) as robustness.

The findings show that derivatives use has an inverse influence on firm value. The firms did not use derivatives as a risk management tool but for speculation motives. However, the corporate governance index significantly weakens this relationship. However, strong governance forces the managers to use derivatives for hedging purposes. The firm-specific factors, including size, age, leverage, cash, financial distress cost, dividend and growth opportunities, also significantly influence firm value. The findings are robust to the other estimation models.

The findings indicate that emerging economies like Pakistan are more prone to agency problems. The strong corporate governance structure helps firms turn the speculative motive of derivatives use into hedging purposes and mitigate the agency issues.

This empirical evidence suggests that good governance structures can help improve the impact of derivative usage on firm value.

To the best of the author's knowledge, this is the first study that examines the conditional role of corporate governance on the derivatives–value relationship from the viewpoint of agency problem/speculative motive.

Purpose – This research pinpoints the limitations of conventional models for evaluating the performance of hedge funds and attempts to provide a new framework for modeling the dynamics of risk structures of hedge funds.

Methodology/approach – This chapter aims to explore how the systematic risk exposures of hedge funds vary over time and depend on exogenous variables that managers are supposed to use in their dynamic investment strategies. To achieve this, we used a Bayesian time-varying CAPM-based beta model within a state space technology.

Findings – The results showed that the volatility, term spread rate, and shocks in liquidity influence significantly on the time variation of hedge funds. Besides, the dynamics of beta indicates that the transmission channels of systematic risk are mainly the leverage levels of hedge funds and liquidity shocks.

Originality/value of chapter – These results are original because they help to explain how expected and unexpected hedge fund returns are correlated with the systematic risk factors via the beta dynamics.

The loss of an amount in excess of $100m cash deposit can be disruptive to the operations, definitely the liquidity of the hedge fund. Should a hedge fund liquidity position deteriorate, its compromised solvency could impact its vendors, most notably creditors and prime brokers. Large successful hedge funds do make basic mistakes. Lawyer Marc Dreier committed the criminal act of selling fraudulent promissory notes to hedge funds and others. Mr Drier’s success in selling fraudulent promissory notes was facilitated by his accomplices who posed as fake representatives of legitimate institutions. Drier and team presented bogus “audited financial statements” and forged developer’s signatures, and even went as far as using the unsuspecting institutions’ premises for meetings to meet potential notes buyers to further falsely legitimize the scheme. He had the notes buyers send their payments to his law firm account, to secure the money. His actions cost his victims, who include 13 hedge fund managers, other investors and entities, $400m in addition to his law firm’s employees who also suffered when his law firm was dissolved. For his actions, he was sentenced 20 years in federal prison for investment fraud. This study aims to direct hedge fund investors and other stakeholders to thoroughly vet the compliance function, especially controls on cash disbursements, even if the hedge fund is sizable (in excess of $1bn). Investors and even other stakeholders also should place a greater focus on what is usually overlooked issue; most notably the credit quality and authenticity of short-term investments bought by their hedge funds.

A thorough investigation of a fraud committed by a lawyer against a number of hedge funds. Several important lessons are identified to professionals who conduct due diligence on hedge funds.

The details of the case are very remarkable. This case directs investors’ attention to place greater efforts on certain aspects of operational risk and due diligence on not only hedge funds but also other investment managers. Normally investors conduct operational due diligence on the fund and its operations. Investors also vet fund external parties such as prime brokers, custodians, accountants and fund administrators. Yet, investors normally do not suspect the quality of short-term fund investments. In this case, the short-terms investments were the source of unforeseen yet substantial risk.

Stakeholders in hedge funds need to carefully investigate the issuer of and the quality of short-term investments that a hedge fund invests in. Future research can investigate the association of hedge fund manager failure with a liquidity position of the fund.

Investors must thoroughly the entirety of the fund including short-term securities.

Normally, it is the hedge funds that commit the fraud against investors. In this case, it is the multi-billion hedge funds run by sophisticated fund managers, who are the victims.

In December 2008, as the financial and economic crisis continued on its devastating course, a new scandal erupted. After the 1998s failure of Long-Term Capital Management, Madoff's fraud once again discredits the hedge funds industry. This scandal is, however, of a different kind. Indeed, Madoff's firm is not a standard hedge fund but a developed Ponzi scheme. By explaining Madoff's system and exploring the reasons for its collapse, this paper draws risk management lessons from this fraud, especially for operational risk management, due diligence processes, and the use of quantitative replication, regulatory, and standardizing approaches of the hedge fund industry.

This paper aims to review, systematize and integrate existing research on alternative investments. This study conducts performance analysis comprising production timeline, country-wise contributions, analysis of sources, affiliations, the geography of authors and citations of studies on alternative investments.

This study adopts a thematic and bibliometric analysis methodology on 570 papers identified from mainstream literature on alternative investments. This study provides an analysis of science mapping, including co-citation analysis, bibliometric coupling, word analysis and trending topics on alternative investments. In addition, the study presents thematic analysis by classifying existing studies into nine themes.

Alternative investments provide diversification benefits and play a critical role in portfolio construction, and the research on alternative investments has gained momentum in recent times. This study finds that hedge funds, private equity, artwork, collectibles, commodities, fine wine and venture capital have remained prominent themes in the field. Investments in cryptocurrencies are an emerging area in the research on alternative investments.

This study limits itself to the papers published in the area of finance and economics listed on the Scopus database.

This study provides quantitative bibliometric analysis and thematic analysis of the extant literature on alternative investments and identifies the areas that could be developed to advance research on alternative investments.