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28 Jul 2022 Author : InfoPro Community Manager

The December 31, 2021 “end of LIBOR” date has come and gone without major market disruption

For the last few years, the December 31st, 2021 date has been looming, as market participants anticipated the end of LIBOR. While publication of all seven-euro LIBOR settings has ceased, the U.S. dollar LIBOR settings were given a longer window, with June 30, 2023, as their end date. Regulators’ expectations, however, are that the use of USD LIBOR between now and 2023 is limited. Overall, the market has transitioned to the Secured Overnight Financing Rate (SOFR) across cash and derivative markets. The U.S. Department of the Treasury and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) also issued final rules relating to the transition away from LIBOR.

On March 15th, 2022, President Biden signed into law the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2022, which largely mirrors the New York LIBOR legislation in establishing a clear and uniform process for replacing LIBOR in legacy contracts where the terms do not provide for the use of a clearly defined or practicable replacement benchmark rate. The recommended benchmark replacement is based on SOFR and includes a recommended spread adjustment and benchmark replacement conforming changes. The legislation contains a “safe harbor” provision for eligible persons who select SOFR as a LIBOR replacement under existing contracts.

All financial market participants including retail customers, corporations, issuers, investors, asset managers, service providers of financial products and large financial institutions are impacted by the risks associated with LIBOR.

Finance practitioners continue to monitor and adjust to these changes as they edit and draft new provisions in credit agreements with robust fallback language that incorporates SOFR or other rates such as BSBY and Ameribor. Finance practitioners require access to a core set of resources, including practical guidance, secondary analytical resources, market precedent, current awareness resources and more to stay on top of this developing space. LexisNexis® addresses these needs with an industry-leading collection of content and tools.


Practical Guidance Finance
 

Practical Guidance, integrated into the Lexis+® experience and available within the legacy Lexis® platform, provides extensive content and guidance to help practitioners stay on top of developments in all areas of finance, including the LIBOR transition. Specifically, Practical Guidance practice notes, annotated templates, trackers, presentations, and legal developments articles can help get junior attorneys up to speed and help senior associates and partners stay current on the latest developments.

Below you can see the LIBOR Replacement Resource Kit, which compiles and organizes Practical Guidance LIBOR transition content, listing out all relevant titles and content types:


Practical Guidance Trackers
Practical Guidance trackers monitor developments to keep your attorneys and clients up to date on an issue or area of law. 

Click the bell in the top left to set up an alert so you can be notified when new agreements are added to the tracker.

        

 

  • Access to Publicly Filed Market Precedent: Lexis Market Standards
    Practical Guidance Market Standards: Finance offers powerful technology to help finance practitioners search, analyze and compare publicly filed credit agreements and commitment letters with the comprehensive, detailed, and timely deal information. Market Standards provides 90 deal points for credit agreements and 70 for commitment letters, including graphs and deal points addressing the LIBOR transition, and the option to search for SOFR deals by leveraging the keyword search.

 

  • Current Awareness: Stay on top of developments and trends
    Bundled within Lexis+ (and legacy Lexis) is a robust collection of legal news publications to provide updates on developments in this constantly changing landscape. Publications include Law360®, The Wall Street Journal®, The Troubled Company Reporter and The New York Law Journal® among others.

    To locate and track on-point legal news, simply use Explore Content in Lexis+, select View Our Practice Centers and then select Banking and Financial Services from the resulting screen.




    Next, enter a search such as “SOFR” in the search bar, and expand all content to select News or Legal News.




    Click the bell icon in the top left to set up an alert for new articles.




    Navigate to Sources on the left-hand column to see and select individual publications.


For more information on how the LexisNexis portfolio can support the specific needs of your organization’s finance practitioners, please contact your LexisNexis account representative to arrange a bespoke presentation.