This paper analyzes value creation through currency hedging in the Spanish market. The results show that the hedging with derivatives generated an average premium of 1.53% and that foreign currency debt generated 7.52%, with respect to company value approximated by Tobin's Q, while operational hedging does not affect company value. Moreover, in half of the observations corresponding to companies that hedged with derivatives, the value premium was between 0.08% and 0.99%. In the case of foreign currency debt, the range was between 1.79% and 10.37%. It demonstrates that the contribution of currency hedging to company value fluctuates considerable according to the volume of financial hedging. Thus, an empirical study of this aspect which only analyses the decision to hedge through dummy variables to define financial hedging, as empirical previous studies, can lead to biased results in terms of estimated premium amounts, because it assumes a homogenous treatment of companies regardless of hedging volumes.
The European Journal of Finance 913This paper aims to provide an answer to the question of whether using currency hedging is a value adding corporate activity in the Spanish market. 1 We focus our analysis on financial hedging instruments that are derivatives and foreign currency debt. We also examine operational hedging associated with geographic diversification. 2 This paper makes three major contributions to the literature regarding. First, to our knowledge it is the first empirical research to specifically target the Spanish market. Furthermore, there is only one previous empirical study in the Eurozone. Clark and Mefteh (2010) investigated the relationship between foreign currency derivatives use and firm value on a sample of French firms in 2004. However, we also study the impact of foreign currency debt and operational hedging use on value creation over the period 2004-2007. Most research has focused on the US market (Allayannis and Weston 2001; Allayannis, Ihrig, and Weston 2001; Graham and Rogers 2002; Gleason, Kim, and Mathur 2005), while there are only two previous studies focusing on the British market (Clark and Judge 2008; Belghitar, Clark, and Judge 2008). Eurozone is the main source of imports. However, 40.9% of imports came from non-EU countries in 2007 and there are countries that pose a significant turnover as are China, the USA and UK. China is the major source of Spanish imports outside the EU and the fourth Spanish supplier in 2007.Second, many studies focused only on financial hedging with derivatives. Our research has included foreign currency debt and operational hedging. Although Allayannis, Ihrig, and Weston (2001) also studied foreign currency debt and derivatives, they did not identify the value premium associated with each financial hedging instrument. Only Clark and Judge (2008) distinguished these value premiums, but these authors only included the operational hedging as a control variable. In addition, most previous studies used dummy variables as proxies for currency hedging. Howev...