Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions). Your first question comes from Joseph Gibney with Capital One.
Joseph Gibney - CapitalOne/Southcoast Inc.
Good morning, everybody.
Gregory Kenny
Good morning, Joe.
Brian Robinson
Good morning.
Joseph Gibney - CapitalOne/Southcoast Inc.
Brian, I just want to touch base on the ForEx sign. Obviously, positive initiatives there with the $25 million on the incremental payments, I'm just curious on your thoughts of combating this a little bit further in the first quarter. Do you feel confident this will be adequate, this is actually a very rapidly moving target and putting hedges as you alluded in your last call is something that is an expensive kind of proposition and certainly a difficult one, but curious to be thinking you're a little bit better prepared here into first quarter, potentially not be facing as much noise as we saw in the last couple of quarters?
Brian Robinson
Yes, Joe, I think generally the answer to that would be yes, again. So much of this was caused really during the six week period from mid-September really through the end of October. And so in addition to both accelerating those payments of the U.S. dollar denominated obligations there are other sort of actions, which we're doing. And so I think we have our arms rounded.
The hedging situation, the ability to hedge some of these currencies hasn't... to be candid hasn't changed a lot. I think it's more around managing our monetary positions in these parts of the world. So as we've said, in a business, which is truly global, we would expect some element of transactional gains and losses going forward, but we've embedded that in our guidance.
Joseph Gibney - CapitalOne/Southcoast Inc.
Okay, thanks. And Greg, just one question on the emerging market side. I appreciate the color there. Actually growth slowing, certainly starting to beginning to contract there, I know previously you talked about Europe lagged in the U.S. by a couple of quarters and still steadier growth in the emerging side, but have we kind of starting to see a little bit of a flip flop more signs of may be some stabilization of bottoming in North America and reversal of that trend where things accelerate to the downside in the rest of the world or some general color there will be appreciated?
Gregory Kenny
Yes, Joe, good question. I guess one as in Europe it's really a tale of two cities with Spain which had as you know had a tremendous run as an economy with really negative real interest rates for a long time. That was down in the fourth quarter about 25% from the prior year.
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