Investigating the Determinants of the Decision to Engage In a Corporate Hedging Strategy

Abstract

This paper investigates the decision to engage in a comprehensive corporate hedging strategy for Australian listed companies. Specifically the pursuit of a comprehensive hedging strategy is gauged by jointly investigating the corporate use of foreign currency derivatives; interest rate derivatives; commodity derivatives and foreign debt. The results show that firm size, leverage, dividend yield and block holdings are incentive factors to the comprehensive hedging decision, while executive shares is a disincentive factor. Consistent with hedging theory, the significance of the leverage variables supports the financial distress cost hypothesis. Support is also found for the dividend decision is a substitute for corporate hedging.