How do changes in exchange rates affect the consolidation of financial statements of a multinational corporation? BP PLC (ticker: BP) has operations all over the world. Look at BP's sales and operating income from U.S. operations for the last five years.
The default currency for all figures is BP's home currency, British pounds. Convert these numbers to U.S. dollars.
The bottom of the page gives you the exchange rate at which the numbers have been converted from British pounds to U.S. dollars in each year. Has the U.S. dollar strengthened or weakened over the last five years?
Convert U.S. sales and operating income for each of the last five years to British pounds using both the minimum and maximum of the five exchange rates.
Which of the two exchange rates gives BP the larger sales and operating income in British pounds in each year? As a multinational corporation, does BP prefer a stronger or a weaker U.S. dollar relative to the British pound?