On Jan. 4, 2022, the Department of the Treasury (Treasury) and the Internal Revenue Service (the Service) published final regulations (the Final Regulations) .
Introduction
Although the London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR) is currently the most widely used interest rate benchmark and serves as a price reference for a broad range of financial instruments, the UK Financial Conduct Authority will stop supporting LIBOR at the end of 2021. According to the National Working Group (NWG) on Swiss Franc Reference Rates, the Swiss Average Rate Overnight (SARON) is the proposed replacement standard. The transition period poses several challenges for national and global market participants.
In December 2020 the Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA) published guidance on the LIBOR transition in Switzerland. In this guidance, FINMA requires all supervised institutions (eg, banks, securities firms and insurers) to plan and initiate the necessary actions to implement the transition roadmap outlined therein with the goal to be fully prepared and operationally ready for the planned discontinuation of most LIBOR benchmarks by the end of 2021.
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On March 5, 2021, the ICE Benchmark Administration (IBA), UK
Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and International Swaps and
Derivatives Association (ISDA) made important announcements
regarding the timelines of the cessations of the London Interbank
Offered Rate (LIBOR).
LIBOR cessation dates
The IBA, which administers LIBOR, confirmed in its feedback
statement on its consultation regarding the cessation of its
publication of LIBOR that the majority of LIBOR panel banks would
not be willing to contribute to LIBOR in the future and announced
that it will cease publishing the LIBOR rates described below, as
JPY LIBOR
GBP LIBOR
USD LIBOR
Overnight and 12 Months
‘Synthetic’ LIBOR
Under proposed amendments to the UK Benchmarks Regulation, the FCA would have the power to require the IBA to continue publishing LIBOR settings on a “synthetic” basis using a changed methodology. The FCA has indicated that synthetic LIBOR would be based on a forward-looking term rate version of the relevant risk-free rate plus a fixed spread adjustment calculated over the same period and in the same way as the spread adjustment implemented in the IBOR Fallbacks Supplement (Fallbacks Supplement) and the 2020 IBOR Fallbacks Protocol (Fallbacks Protocol). The FCA has advised the IBA that it has no intention of using its proposed new powers to require the IBA to continue publication of any LIBOR setting beyond the intended cessation dates. However, for the LIBOR settings included in the table below, the FCA has advised the IBA that it will consult on using its proposed new powers to require the IBA to c
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The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has recently
reiterated that 2021 is the critical year for firms to
complete their transition away from
LIBOR .
1
LIBOR).
In this article, we discuss the current state of play and the
measures governments and institutions are taking to aid this
transition, including the development of overnight risk-free rates
(
RFRs), recommended transition milestones and
proposed legislative reform.
Development of RFRs
The European Central Bank commenced publishing the Euro Short
Term Rate on 2 October 2019, and since then RFRs for all LIBOR