LIBOR Transition

Mayer Brown's Marlon Paz and Leslie Cruz and Morae's Heidi Rudolph discuss their views on the focus of the OCIE announcement, specific and practical actions that affected organisations need to take to achieve "preparedness" and how organisations can start to build a programmatic approach to responding to the OCIE's announcement.

Mayer Brown partner Paul Forrester and Joy Saphla, President, Strategic Solutions from Morae discuss the broader landscape as well as sharing insight into the collaboration between Morae Global and Mayer Brown.

Mayer Brown partners Ed Parker and Patrick Scholl, counsel Nanak Keswani and Bradley Berman, and senior associate Emma Khoo for a discussion that will cover the latest market updates on IBOR replacement, transition from EONIA under ISDA and DRV, issues and considerations for other structured products in the United States, including CMS rate-linked products, key issues when a loan or structured finance arrangement has an embedded swap, and fallback considerations for legacy transactions.

On October 8, 2019, the US Internal Revenue Service released proposed regulations addressing the US federal tax consequences of replacing an interbank offered rate (IBOR) with a successor rate. The proposed regulations generally provide the circumstances in which the replacement of an IBOR with a fallback rate, or an addition of a fallback mechanic to an existing instrument, will not result in a deemed exchange of the instrument under Section 1001 of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, as amended. The proposed regulations also provide guidance on other considerations with respect to the transition away from IBORs. Mayer Brown partners Russell Nance and Steven Garden and associate Brennan Young provide an overview of the proposed regulations.

The expected phase-out of LIBOR will affect trillions of dollars in investments across a wide range of financial products. The market has been working to adapt new transactions to a post-LIBOR world, but legacy transactions will also be affected. Whether and how those contracts can be modified to account for the unavailability of LIBOR - and how courts will respond to the changed facts - are open questions. Mayer Brown partners Matthew Ingber, Chris Houpt and Sagi Tamir discuss the current efforts to replace LIBOR, litigation risks that market participants may face, and how to plan for those risks.