News release: “The major interest reference rates (such as LIBOR, EURIBOR, and TIBOR) are widely used in the global financial system as benchmarks for a large volume and broad range of financial products and contracts. The cases of attempted market manipulation and false reporting of global reference rates, together with the post-crisis decline in liquidity in interbank unsecured funding markets, have undermined confidence in the reliability and robustness of existing interbank benchmark interest rates. Uncertainty surrounding the integrity of these reference rates represents a potentially serious source of vulnerability and systemic risk.  Against this background, the G20 asked the FSB to undertake a fundamental review of major interest rate benchmarks and plans for reform to ensure that those plans are consistent and coordinated, and that interest rate benchmarks are robust and appropriately used by market participants. To take the work forward, the FSB established a high-level Official Sector Steering Group (OSSG) of regulators and central banks. The OSSG was assigned responsibility for coordinating and maintaining the consistency of reviews of existing interest rate benchmarks and for guiding the work of a Market Participants Group, which was in turn tasked to examine the feasibility and viability of adopting additional reference rates and potential transition issues.  The FSB decided that the OSSG should focus its initial work on the interest rate benchmarks that are considered to play the most fundamental role in the global financial system, namely LIBOR, EURIBOR and TIBOR (the “IBORs”).”

• Reforming Major Interest Rate Benchmarks – 22 July 2014