Some European benchmark rules for critical benchmarks delayed by 2 years

The European Commission has announced in a press release that the EU institutions have decided to delay the entry into force of some regulation related to critical benchmarks and to third-country benchmarks by two years. Some rules have been delayed to 31 December 2021.

This delay will in particular apply to EURIBOR, EONIA, LIBOR and STIBOR. For LIBOR it will apply irrespective of the Brexit result.

Given the importance of this announcement, in particular for the derivatives collateralized at EONIA (with the mandatory clearing and UMR, this is almost all EUR derivatives), it is surprising that this announcement appears as a single paragraph in a press release on "Sustainable finance: Commission welcomes agreement on a new generation of low-carbon benchmarks".

 The paragraph of significant importance for the many trillion large EUR derivative markets is:
Separately, the EU institutions also agreed to grant providers of “critical benchmarks” — interest rates such as Euribor or EONIA — two extra years until 31 December 2021 to comply with the new Benchmark Regulation requirements.  Given the crucial importance of third-country benchmarks for EU companies, the extra two years for benchmarks produced outside the EU was also introduced to provide additional time for work with non-EU regulators on how these benchmarks can be recognised as equivalent or otherwise endorsed for use in the EU. 
Personally I think it deserve a post by itself in my blog with a meaningful title (by opposition to being hidden in the middle of another post).

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Multi-curve framework book: new edition in progress

Rigged: part 1 - Will there be a part 2?

Treasury / Swap spreads are negative. And what?