Operations In Foreign Currency

3 Months Ended

Mar. 31, 2017

Operations In Foreign Currency [Abstract]

Note 3 – Operations in Foreign Currency

We have significant assets in Australia and New Zealand. To the extent possible, we conduct our Australian and New Zealand operations (collectively “foreign operations”) on a self-funding basis where we use cash flows generated by our foreign operations to pay for the expense of foreign operations. Our Australian and New Zealand assets and liabilities are translated from their functional currencies of Australian dollar (“AU$”) and New Zealand dollar (“NZ$”), respectively, to the U.S. dollar based on the exchange rate as of March 31, 2017. The carrying value of the assets and liabilities of our foreign operations fluctuates as a result of changes in the exchange rates between the functional currencies of the foreign operations and the U.S. dollar. The translation adjustments are accumulated in the Accumulated Other Comprehensive Income in the Consolidated Balance Sheets.

As indicated previously, our overall operating strategy is to conduct business mostly on a self-funding basis (except for funds used to pay an appropriate share of our U.S. corporate overhead). As such, we do not use derivative financial instruments to hedge against the risk of foreign currency exposure. However, in certain circumstances, we may decide to move funds between jurisdictions where circumstances encouraged us to do so from an overall economic standpoint. As of December 31, 2016, we reassessed our assertion in regards intercompany advances from the U.S. Parent Company to our Australian subsidiary that we previously deemed to be of long-term investment in nature. Given the interest savings that will be generated from using funds through the repayments of intercompany loans by our Australian subsidiary to finance a portion of our Union Square redevelopment project rather than paying up for high interest mezzanine loans (which will yield overall notional all-in interest savings of approximately 10.0%), we changed our assertion for a portion of these intercompany loans to short-term. As a result, we recognized a gain of $825,000 representing the foreign currency movement on the intercompany advances based on the relative strengthening of the Australian dollar to the U.S. dollar for the quarter ended March 31, 2017.

Presented in the table below are the currency exchange rates for Australia and New Zealand as of and for the period-ended March 31, 2017, December 31, 2016 and March 31, 2016:


	Foreign Currency / USD
	As of and for the Three Months Ended	As of and for the Twelve Months Ended	As of and for the Three Months Ended
	March 31, 2017	December 31, 2016	March 31, 2016
Spot Rate
Australian Dollar	0.7638	0.7230	0.7677
New Zealand Dollar	0.7001	0.6958	0.6926
Average Rate
Australian Dollar	0.7584	0.7440	0.7216
New Zealand Dollar	0.7122	0.6973	0.6637

- Definition

The entire disclosure for foreign currency transactions and translation. This may include description of foreign currency transactions, foreign currency gains and losses, explanation of change in cumulative translation adjustment, description of effect of subsequent foreign currency exchange rate change, cumulative translation adjustment movement, foreign currency translation adjustment by component movement, translation adjustment for net investment hedge movement, adjustment for long-term intercompany transactions, schedule of long-term intercompany balances and any other foreign currency transactions and translation related items.

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