The London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR) reform has been an ongoing project for the past several years, proceeding in fits and starts. It seems, however, that the global regulatory community has now finally begun in earnest to plan for a future without LIBOR. Reforming LIBOR is a complicated undertaking, since LIBOR acts as a reference rate to several hundred trillion dollars in both notional value of derivatives and in bonds, loans and securitizations and thus plays a very important role in the global financial market. LIBOR has attained such a unique role because it is calculated for five currencies (USD, GBP, EUR, CHF and JPY) which come in seven maturities (from overnight to 12 months).

By Thomas Werlen / Jascha Trubowitz (Reference: CapLaw-2018-17)