While these studies provide suggestive evidence that
bond issuers do, in fact, consider relative interest rates
and exchange rates in making their currency denomination
decisions, it is challenging on the basis of this type of
anecdotal evidence alone to evaluate the true scale and
scope of opportunistic FC debt issuance.
Each of the
studies assumes a simple binary choice for firms between
issuing bonds in their home currency and issuing
them in a single foreign currency. In practice, however,
as evident in Table 15.1, firms face a menu of potential
alternatives when it comes to choosing the currency in
which to denominate their bonds.
These studies also
adopt fairly simple and ad hoc proxies for relative borrowing
costs across currencies that implicitly assume
that the FC bond issuers leave their foreign currency exposures
unhedged. Finally, virtually all studies fail to
control for the FC bond issues that are potentially driven
by a natural hedging motive.
As a result, it is difficult to
rule out the possibility that the FC bonds they consider
are actually driven by risk management considerations
rather than true opportunism.