Come September, Libor could be history

Central bankers and regulators will hold talks in September on whether the troubled global Libor interest rate can be reformed or whether it is so damaged that the benchmark of borrowing costs should be scrapped.

Bank of England Governor Mervyn King told fellow central bankers in a letter that it was “very clear that radical reforms of the Libor system are needed.”

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and global financial regulator Mark Carney, who is also Governor of Bank of Canada, floated possible alternatives to the London interbank offered rate, which some bankers manipulated in the 2007-09 financial crisis.

“There are different alternatives if Libor cannot be fixed,” Carney said. “If it’s structurally flawed and can’t be fixed — which is a possibility — there may need to be different types of approaches, and we need to think that through.”

The concerns over Libor prompted scrutiny of lending benchmarks elsewhere. The European Central Bank (ECB) is putting pressure on the organisers of Euribor to shore up faith in the euro benchmark, sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.

Singapore, Hong Kong and Japan announced reviews of the way interbank benchmark rates were set in the Asian financial centres, while in South Korea the anti-trust agency widened a probe into possible rate-fixing.

Bank of England Governor King put the Libor issue on the agenda of the Economic Consultative Committee of global central bankers that will meet in Basel, Switzerland, on September 9, a source said.

The discussions will continue there the following week at the Financial Stability Board’s steering committee, which is chaired by Carney and which also includes financial regulators.

“There is an attraction to moving to obviously more market-based rates if possible,” Carney said.

Libor is used for $550 trillion of interest rate derivatives contracts and influences a wide array of financial products from mortgages to credit cards, and Carney said it was crucial that markets be able to have “absolute confidence” in it.

Carney mentioned the possibility of using repo rates and Overnight Index Swap rates, two ideas also mentioned on Wednesday by Bernanke. The Fed Chairman singled out Treasury Bill rates as a potential benchmark, but said the Fed had not come out in favor of a specific alternative.

In Asia, the Hong Kong Association of Banks said it was reviewing the mechanism for determining its Hibor benchmark. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority said it supported the review and would monitor the process and outcome.

The Monetary Authority of Singapore said it was examining the setting of the Singapore interbank offered rate (Sibor), widely used in the pricing of mortgages and other loans in the city-state.

South Korea’s Fair Trade Commission has investigated nine banks and 10 brokerages this week over suspected collusion in setting three-month certificate of deposit (CD) rates.

The Japanese banking industry lobby has asked the 18 banks contributing to the Tokyo interbank offered rate (Tibor) to check whether correct procedures were being followed, although the group's head said he did not believe there was a problem.

Libor is calculated daily in London for the US dollar and other currencies when panels of banks submit estimates of how much it costs them to borrow from each other.