Libor’s End Forces Global Banks to Juggle Multiple Replacements

For the world’s biggest financial firms, getting ready for the end of one multi trillion-dollar global reference rate is a monumental undertaking. Getting ready for the end of half-a-dozen? Some would call that impossible.

Yet that’s what many market participants are facing as Libor’s demise approaches. The decision to phase out the scandal-tainted set of benchmarks by the end of 2021 is forcing regulators around the world to simultaneously push ahead with their own domestic funding-rate alternatives.

For global firms with hundreds of billions of dollars of exposure to Libor and other interbank offered rates across various currencies, it means ...