A Study on the Stability about the KIKO as Financial Instruments for Hedging (Laying stress on the precedent of Korean supreme court)

KIKO에 대한 환(換)헤지상품(商品)으로서 적정성(適正性)에 관한 연구(硏究)

Before and after the Capital Market Integration Act in 2007 is implemented in South Korea, many of small-and mid sized exporting companies in South Korea has been bankrupted or filed for lawsuit claiming mis-selling(KIKO) by the banks. The basic economic structure of KIKO in Korea are part of a business model based on the use or misuse of exotic derivatives whose results are anything but imaginary. 571 mid sized exporting companies have been damaged about $28 billion. KIKO is a currency option product that sells foreign currencies at higher foreign exchange rate when the rate moves within a certain range, but sells foreign currencies at two or three times lower rate than the market price when the rate exceeds the designated upper limit. KIKO, Therefore, is hard to know whether the non financial firms intended to hedge against further strengthening of their currency or merely to speculate. It is also hard to know how thoroughly they understood the risk-return profile of these transactions. It is similarly hard to ascertain whether the derivatives dealers offering these transactions were meeting the demands of their clients or taking advantage of them. These exotic derivatives were inappropriate for either hedging or speculating, and no knowledgeable investor would be likely to enter into these contracts intentionally.