On 16th November 2009, SUERF, CEPS and the Belgian Financial Forum coorganized a conference "Crisis management at cross-roads" in Brussels. All papers in the present volume are based on contributions at the conference and the SUERF Annual Lecture which followed the event.

Many interest rates are as volatile as exchange rates and thus represent an equally important source of risk for corporations. While this is true not only for financial institutions, but for other corporations as well, little is known about the interest rate exposure of nonfinancial firms....

It has been viewed as an unsolved puzzle that only for a small number of firms a significant impact of foreign exchange rate risk on firm value could be detected empirically. This paper investigates whether the results of previous studies can be explained by the fact that only the linear...

This paper presents international evidence on the use of financial derivatives for a sample of 7,292 non-financial firms from 48 countries including the United States. Across all countries, 59.8% of the firms use derivatives in general, while 43.6% use currency derivatives, 32.5% interest rate...

Firm value is influenced in many direct and indirect ways by financial risks, which consist of unexpected changes of foreign exchange rates, interest rates and commodity prices. The fact that a significant number of corporations are committing resources to risk management activi-ties is,...

This paper examines whether the introduction of the Euro in 1999 was associated with lower stock return volatility, market risk exposures and foreign exchange rate risk exposures for 12,821 nonfinancial firms in Europe, the United States, and Japan. We show that though the Euro led to a...

Using a sample of 6,888 non-financial firms from 47 countries, we examine the effect of derivative use on firms’ risk measures and value. We control for endogeneity by matching users and non-users on the basis of their propensity to hedge. We also use a new technique to estimate the effect of...

In the current economic context, risk management is very important, because the risks are becoming more difficult to identify and especially to control. The company objectives achievement requires the knowledge and multiple risk taking. Risk management is a process conducted by the management...

The paper aims to identify the types of risks that a company faces when entering the European Union's market. Risk may be defined as an uncertain event that may have a negative effect on achieving objectives and risk management can be defined as the process that identifies analyses and accept or...

Risk appetite is a very complex system, therefore one of the most important element of a company’s enterprise risk management (ERM) is the risk appetite defining. A proper risk management means making good choices towards the risks a company faces in order to achieve its objectives and...