Do Family Owners Use Firm Hedging Policy to Hedge Personal Undiversified Wealth Risk?

We examine whether family ownership affects the value impact of the operational and financial dimensions of firms' hedging policies. We show that family firms' market valuations are higher than those of non-family firms, consistent with the view that family firms benefit from family owners' long-term perspectives and ability to monitor managers. In addition, while both operational and financial hedging policies per se are valuable in non-family firms, they do not create any value in family firms. These results support the notion that the founding families' need to hedge the risk of their undiversified personal wealth portfolio leads to suboptimal risk management decisions.