Trade Finance and Services, Comptroller's

Running head: MANAGEMENT OF INTERNATIONAL TRADE FINANCE AND FOREIGN
DIRECT INVESTMENTS
Management of International Trade Finance and Foreign Direct Investments
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author’s Note

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Table of Contents
Process to manage international trade finance and foreign direct investments by global firms......2
Funding of Global Firms.............................................................................................................2
International Trade Finance.........................................................................................................4
Foreign Direct Investments..........................................................................................................5
Capital Budgeting in Multinational Level...................................................................................7
References........................................................................................................................................9

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Process to manage international trade finance and foreign direct investments by global
firms
Business finance can be considered as the money and credit that the businesses employ
for the purpose of business and wide use of this practice can be seen in the multinational
business organizations. Proper management of international trade finance and foreign direct
investment is a crucial part of business finance for the multinational corporations and this
requires these corporations to take into account all the relevant aspects (Müllner, 2017). The
main aim of this essay is to shed light on how multinational companies or global firms manage
their international trade finance and foreign direct investments by putting special emphasis on
the aspects like funding of multinational firms, international trade finance, foreign direct
investment as well as political risk and multinational capital budgeting and cross-border
acquisition.
Funding of Global Firms
Funding of the global firms is considered as a crucial step in managing international trade
finance and foreign direct investments. There are different types of funding options are available
to the global firms and they can be used for raising the required funds. It is required for most of
the global firms to commence raising the required funds with the issue of international bonds as
this helps in gaining recognition in the international financial markets (Drover et al., 2017). This
strategy can be implemented through the issue of international bond in the target market or in the
Eurobond market. For example, a firm resident in United States issues a bond that is
denominated in U.S. dollars, but then he sells the same bond to Europe and Japan, not to the
investors of U.S; this is considered as Eurobond. Global firms are required to mix the debt and

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equity in such a manner so that the overall cost of capital of their business is minimized. It is
considered that the multinational business organizations are in better place than the national
firms for supporting higher debt ratios because of the presence of their diversified cash flows
internationally. For this reason, multinational business organizations can use greater amount of
debt in their capital structure as a part of managing international trade.
There are three key aspects of the global equity market; they are issuance of equity,
listing of equity and private placement. The following table shows the movement of the Toronto
Stock Exchange’s S&P/TSX movement in the equity market for the last five years:
(Source: tradingeconomics.com, 2020)
Moreover, global firms can raise the required funds through certain alternative sources of equity
such as sale of a directed public share, sale of a European public issue to investors, private
placement under SEC Rule 144A, selling shares to private equity funds and selling shares in the

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foreign firms (Cao et al., 2017). Global firms can enjoy certain advantages by raising the funds
through foreign equity listing such as improved liquidity of present shares, increase in share
price, and increase in visibility and acceptance of the firms, establishment of secondary market
and others. Apart from these, other effective options for the global firms for funding themselves
include bank taking loans and securitized debts, issuing international debt instruments such as
syndicated loans, Euronotes, Euro-commercial paper, issuing foreign bonds and Eurobonds
(Gourinchas, Rey & Sauzet, 2019).
International Trade Finance
Managing trade finance is considered as another crucial part in managing international
trade finance and foreign direct investments. The presence of two types of buyers can be seen in
global trade finance; they are unaffiliated buyers and affiliated buyers; and it is a key job of the
global firms to manage these two types of buyers effectively (Bhogal & Trivedi, 2019). As
unaffiliated buyers can be new and experienced, they pose credit risk as the exporter may face
issues in assessing their creditworthiness because of the factors like geographical distance, lack
of record, language and others. Therefore, this risk is managed by the global companies through
issuing letter of credit accompanied by other documents so that the exporter can rely on the
bank’s credit standing. On the other hand, standard international trade documents are used by the
global firms for affiliated buyers as they has no credit risk as both the importer and exporter are
the part of the same corporate unit (Antras & Foley, 2015).
In the present situation, intra-firm trade is gaining more popularity than trading with non-
affiliated exporters and importers in the management of trade finance; and the main reason of
this is that the global firms are now manufacturing as well as selling their products in the
international market concurrently which is contributing towards lowering the costs while

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increasing their competitiveness with the local firms (Grath, 2016). At the same time, the global
firms are required to manage their risks effectively that includes both currency risk and the risk
of non-compliance. Currency risk refers to such risk that the value designated currency for
import changes to the other currency; and non-compliance risk is the type of risk where one of
the parties fails in fulfilling the required obligations. For example, a company of U.S that is
exporting in France wants dollars, but the importer of France wants to make payment in euro. In
case payment is dollars is specified in the sales contract, there is a currency risk for the French
importer that is he might need to pay more Euros than expected while paying. Effective
management of these risks is paramount in managing trade finance and foreign direct
investments. In this aspect, global firms can take help of the government of the target market as
governments have the agencies for insuring against non-payments for export or provided credit
(Bhogal & Trivedi, 2019).
Foreign Direct Investments
There are three crucial aspects that the companies are needed to consider when evolving
from domestic enterprise to multinational enterprise; they are competitive advantage, production
location and types of control, the amount of capital which needs to be invested in the
international market. At the same time, global firms are needed to take advantage of the
imperfection in the global markets as these work as opportunities for them. Moreover, the global
firms are required to ascertain whether they have the sustainable competitive advantage in the
home market that will enable them to compete in the international market (Iamsiraroj, 2016). For
the purpose of international business, organizations prefer foreign direct investments (FDIs)
instead of using alternative modes. This has increased the popularity of FDIs all over the world

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including Canada. The following chart shows that there was an increase of FDIs in Canada in the
fourth quarter of 2019 by 10630 CAD Million.
(Source: tradingeconomics.com, 2020)
Three major aspects need to be there for the firms for effectively managing the FDIs. First, the
ownership needs to be transferred abroad in order to be successful in the international market;
second, they need to be location specific as this will allow them in exploiting the competitive
advantages of the target market; and third, internalization that will allow the entities in
controlling the value chain in the industry (Zekarias, 2016).
Global firms that want to use FDIs need to use proactive or reactive financial strategies as
per relevance as proactive financial strategies help in gaining advantage by lowering cost and
increase availability of capital whereas reactive financial strategies help in discovering the
market imperfections so that they can be exploited. For example, a multinational organization
can utilize uneven rate of exchange and stock prices. Reactive strategy also helps in reacting to
capital controls preventing free movements of funds so that the firm can react to the

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opportunities for minimizing worldwide taxation. Moreover, the global firms are required to
consider the behavioral factors of FDI for deciding where to invest (Agrawal, 2015). Moreover,
global firms can adopt the strategy to export instead of producing in abroad as exporting
provides them with many advantages such as avoiding facing the unique risks in FDI, strategic
alliances, joint ventures and others and reducing the agency costs. At the same time, business
organizations that want to operate in foreign market need to adopt the strategy of licensing and
management contracts instead of producing in abroad. All these help in managing the foreign
direct investments in better manner (Iamsiraroj & Ulubaşoğlu, 2015).
Capital Budgeting in Multinational Level
In case of the foreign projects, the same capital budgeting framework is used that is used
for the domestic products involving steps like identification of initial capital invested, estimation
of cash flows, identification of appropriate discount rate and application of traditional capital
budgeting (Andor, Mohanty & Toth, 2015). However, there are certain complexities in the
foreign projects that need to be managed by the global firms; such as the need of distinguishing
the parent cash flows from project cash flows, explicit recognition of remittance of funds by the
parent company because of different tax system and others constrains; anticipation of different
rates of national inflation; consideration of the possibility of uncertain change in foreign
exchange; evaluation of potential risks; estimation of terminal value which is a difficult task and
others (Andor, Mohanty & Toth, 2015). Moreover, a foreign project needs to be evaluated from
both the projected and parent viewpoint. It is needed for the global firms to take into
consideration that they need to investment only in case they can earn a risk-adjusted return that is
higher locally based competitors as earn on the same project (Rigopoulos, 2015).

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In the presence of both operating and financing cash flows, operating cash flows are
preferred for domestic capital budgeting where financing cash flows are preferred for
international projects. Foreign firms are required to consider the anticipated internal rate of
return because of the fact that the risk-adjusted foreign projects will be of higher risk as
compared to the domestic projects (Batra & Verma, 2017). Foreign subsidiary companies does
not have independent cost of capital and therefore, calculation of hypothetical cost of capital
needs to be taken into consideration for the estimation of discounted rate for a comparable host-
country company. In case a global firm wants to involve in merger and acquisition, it needs to
take into consideration the primary drivers of merger and acquisition in the international market;
they are global competitive environment and industry as well as firm level forces and actions
driving the value of the individual firms (Batra & Verma, 2017). All these aspects need to be
taken into consideration when managing international trade finance.
Therefore, it can well be observed from the above analysis that the global firms can
effectively manage international trade and foreign direct investments by taking into account
business funding options, trade finance, foreign direct investments and capital budgeting in
multinational situations. Consideration of funding options helps the multinational corporations in
developing their capital structure mix in the most optimal manner through the inclusion of debt,
equity and other options. Consideration of international trade finance shows the path to the
multinational organizations to manage credit risks when they are dealing with non-affiliated
exporters. It also shows that the global firms can take assistance of the governments of the target
country for using the facility of export credit. Analysis of different facets of foreign direct
investments assists the global firms taking into account the factors while investing in FDIs.
Considering the aspects of multinational capital budgeting assists the global firms in analysis the

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complexities in capital budgeting in foreign projects. All these together assist the global firms in
effective management of international trade finance and foreign direct investments.

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References
Agrawal, G. (2015). Foreign direct investment and economic growth in BRICS economies: A
panel data analysis. Journal of Economics, Business and Management, 3(4), 421-424.
Andor, G., Mohanty, S. K., & Toth, T. (2015). Capital budgeting practices: A survey of Central
and Eastern European firms. Emerging Markets Review, 23, 148-172.
Antras, P., & Foley, C. F. (2015). Poultry in motion: a study of international trade finance
practices. Journal of Political Economy, 123(4), 853-901.
Batra, R., & Verma, S. (2017). Capital budgeting practices in Indian companies. IIMB
Management Review, 29(1), 29-44.
Bhogal, T., & Trivedi, A. (2019). International trade finance: A pragmatic approach. Springer
Nature.
Canada Foreign Direct Investment | 1981-2019 Data | 2020-2022 Forecast | Historical .
(2020). Tradingeconomics.com. Retrieved 2 April 2020, from
https://tradingeconomics.com/canada/foreign-direct-investment
Canada S&P/TSX Toronto Stock Market Index | 1979-2020 Data | 2021-2022 Forecast .
(2020). Tradingeconomics.com. Retrieved 2 April 2020, from
https://tradingeconomics.com/canada/stock-market
Cao, Y., Myers, L. A., Tsang, A., & Yang, Y. G. (2017). Management forecasts and the cost of
equity capital: international evidence. Review of Accounting Studies, 22(2), 791-838.

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Drover, W., Busenitz, L., Matusik, S., Townsend, D., Anglin, A., & Dushnitsky, G. (2017). A
review and road map of entrepreneurial equity financing research: venture capital,
corporate venture capital, angel investment, crowdfunding, and accelerators. Journal of
management, 43(6), 1820-1853.
Gourinchas, P. O., Rey, H., & Sauzet, M. (2019). The international monetary and financial
system. Annual Review of Economics, 11, 859-893.
Grath, A. (2016). The handbook of international trade and finance: the complete guide for
international sales, finance, shipping and administration. Kogan Page Publishers.
Iamsiraroj, S. (2016). The foreign direct investment–economic growth nexus. International
Review of Economics & Finance, 42, 116-133.
Iamsiraroj, S., & Ulubaşoğlu, M. A. (2015). Foreign direct investment and economic growth: A
real relationship or wishful thinking?. Economic Modelling, 51, 200-213.
Müllner, J. (2017). International project finance: review and implications for international
finance and international business. Management Review Quarterly, 67(2), 97-133.
Rigopoulos, G. (2015). A review on real options utilization in capital budgeting
practice. International Journal of Information, Business and Management, 7(2), 1.
Zekarias, S. M. (2016). The impact of foreign direct investment (FDI) on economic growth in
Eastern Africa: Evidence from panel data analysis. Applied Economics and Finance, 3(1),
145-160.