Libor Law Is Adrift in Albany and Wall Street Is Getting Nervous
- End of Libor is trouble for many contracts without backup rate
- Proposed legislation to address issue has made little headway
Photographer: Kanok Sulaiman/Getty Images
This article is for subscribers only.
For the past seven months, an arcane financial-markets proposal has been collecting dust in the statehouse halls of Albany, New York. Between the pandemic and the racial-justice protests, lawmakers have been so preoccupied that no one in either chamber has even initiated the legislative process on it.
But to bankers, investors and regulators, this is no run-of-the-mill document. It’s a proposal that’s crucial to ensuring that a huge swathe of the global financial system, involving deals worth potentially trillions of dollars, doesn’t turn into a chaotic, lawsuit-riddled mess when the London interbank offered rate is officially discontinued at the end of next year.