How corporates are tooling up for FX risk

Unstable markets have forced corporate treasurers to adopt whizzier methods for managing currency exposures

If hedge funds are the fancy Dans of the foreign exchange market, with their flashy quantitative data tools, then corporates are the steady Eddies. Corporate treasurers typically employ safe, conservative FX programmes to hedge their currency exposure, often limiting themselves to plain vanilla forwards rolled every year.

A recent survey from Citi of 350 corporates showed that most firms assess their FX risk at least every month. Of the companies with annual revenues greater than $10 billion