Answer with Explanation:
Foreign exchange rates can have significant impact on the company's financial statements because the spot rate at that date can be affect the value of the company's assets. It is very common in consolidated financial statement of a multinational companies.
The impact on the financial statements can be as under:
- The fluctuation in currency value can under or over statement of assets, liabilities and Income & Expenses.
- The fluctuation makes the analysis of the financial statements meaningless. The performance of the company in a consolidated statement will be in a state that would not be better understood or time consuming by experts to develop understanding of what the financial statement is saying. It would be difficult for an ordinary person to understand the performance of the business.
- It can also also manipulate the value of the assets of the company because increase in devaluation of the currency means increase in inflation and vice versa.
- The value of the company acquired can be affected significantly which means that the investment (value of whole company) can turn into significant losses which means it can result reporting losses of in a consolidated financial statement. This would also result in decrease in the stock value of the group as a whole.