Case Study: Merck achieves advanced currency Value-at-Risk analysis with Palisade's @RISK

Merck - Customer Case Study

Merck, the multinational pharmaceutical giant, faced complex value‑at‑risk (VAR) challenges from volatile foreign exchange rates across at least 30 countries. With new accounting rules (FAS 133) and more sophisticated hedging practices, Merck needed tools to simulate both balance‑sheet and hedged cash‑flow exposures and to project economic and accounting hedge performance over time. To address this, Merck uses Palisade’s @RISK.

Palisade’s @RISK provided distribution fitting and on‑screen flexibility to test alternative probability models and incorporate many variables (including option time decay and option price volatility), enabling detailed forward‑looking and retrospective VAR analyses. As a result, Palisade’s @RISK has become Merck’s analytic tool of choice for currency surveillance, supporting senior‑management reporting and the company’s ability to evaluate and manage forex exposures across its global footprint.

Merck

Art Misyan

Director of Foreign Exchange