Scottish Independence: Experts Warn Vote is Leaving Firms Open to Major Hedging Risks

Stock and currency markets took a hit over the last week after shock polls revealed that the pro-independence vote has gathered significant ground.

Sterling versus the dollar fell to 10 month lows as investors started to price in the risk that Scots would opt for independence in a few days' time.

"The whole point of hedging FX risk is to try and reduce uncertainty in currency movements and unfortunately what we're seeing is more uncertainty that these companies have ever faced before," said Abhishek Sachdev, managing director at Vedanta Hedging.

"So they're having real concerns with regard to what currency they will be importing or exporting with, how long they should hedge their risk, and normally these are being taken six, to 12, to 18 months ahead.

"However, it is very difficult for these corporates to make those decisions now because they don't know what the decision is going to be in that time frame, so unfortunately it means that many of these corporates won't be hedging their risk as well as they should be."

Scottish people will vote in an independence referendum on 18 September, 2014, and will be asked the straight "yes/no" question: "Should Scotland be an independent country?"

According to a YouGov poll on 7 September, support for Scottish independence took the lead for the first time since the referendum was announced.

The poll, which was conducted between 2 and 5 September, show 51% of the 1,084 surveyed are planning to vote for independence while 49% intend to opt for staying within the union with England.

The markets have become spooked as the uncertainty over what would happen to the pound, in the event of independence, has still yet to be clarified.

"There has been a lot of negative sentiment in the market, there was a sell-off of Sterling, bond yields are changing, but also at the smaller end of the market, SMEs are feeling the repercussions already from people not telling them whether they have won new business or contracts or not," said Martin Berkeley, consultant at Vedanta Hedging.

"So there are market implications but also real business impact implications too."