1. Introduction
The purpose of this paper is to relate risk management with corporate governance by investigating the characteristics of
non-financial companies that posted hefty losses in derivatives trading during the financial crisis that started in 2007. Dodd
(2009) estimates that for 12 countries that include Poland and the economies of Asia and Latin America, derivative trading
affects possibly 50,000 firms, with losses of roughly $530 billion. Kamil et al. (2009) present a small subsample of companies
in Mexico (6 companies) with total losses of US$4.7 billion (an average loss of 23% of total assets) and 3 companies in Brazil
with total losses of US$5.5 billion—and an average loss of 46% of total assets.
During the financial crisis hedging scandals became more frequent. These scandals resulted in companies filing for
bankruptcy; stocks plummeting; and costly lawsuits between companies, banks and shareholders. How this is possible,
considering that the primary goal of hedging is to reduce a company’s risk and ensure stable cash-flows for strategic investment
(Froot et al., 1994; Stulz, 2013), is a question finance researchers have yet to answer. One explanation for this could be
simple incompetence of managers confronted with increasingly complex derivatives. A more plausible explanation, however,
is that those companies intentionally or carelessly engaged in speculation.
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