When I was a junior corporate lawyer, I sat in a debt training session. One of the partners mentioned LIBOR. The explanation confused me. But as a young lawyer I didn’t know very much about the workings of high finance.
It turns out that the benchmark is hodgepodge of figures voluntarily submitted by banks with little market check or control. I’ve heard plenty of stories in the news. For a detailed look, I recently read The Spider Network: The Wild Story of a Math Genius, a Gang of Backstabbing Bankers, and One of the Greatest Scams in Financial History.
LIBOR—the London interbank offered rate, determines the interest rates on trillions in loans worldwide. LIBOR is supposed to reflect the interest rate at which member banks could borrow from one another that day. LIBOR is a global benchmark used to price all types of debt from credit cards, to variable rate mortgages, to complex derivatives and to corporate loans.
Very few people knew exactly how the rate was calculated. (That included that partner giving my training.) Even among the member banks there was widespread confusion as to its exact definition.
David Enrich of The Wall Street Journal manages to make Libor interesting in The Spider Network. His key to the story is telling the story of UBS interest rate derivative trader, Tom Hayes. This socially inept, if not autistic guy, is set up to be the fall guy for the LIBOR scandal.
Banks had lots of internal conflicts on their LIBOR submission. The rate a bank submits is indication of its credit worthiness. If it submits a rate that is higher than its peers, people may wonder if there is a problem at the bank.
The other major conflict is that the banks have traders, like Tom Hayes, who could make money or lose money on their positions depending on whether LIBOR goes up or down.
“LIBOR is a widely utilized benchmark that is no longer derived from a widely traded market. It is an enormous edifice built on an eroding foundation—an unsustainable structure,” stated CFTC Chairman J. Christopher Giancarlo in his opening remarks at the CFTC’s Market Risk Advisory Committee meeting last week. At the same meeting Commissioner Rostin Behnam identified noted that “LIBOR has been subject to pervasive fraud, abuse, and manipulation. Since June 2012, the CFTC has levied sanctions of more than $3.3 billion for LIBOR-related misconduct.”
I would recommend The Spider Network to learn more about the LIBOR mess.