Leaving LIBOR – the ISDA Protocol and Supplement

This article was originally posted on Banking Litigation Notes.

With LIBOR due to disappear by end-2021, work has been underway to facilitate the transition from LIBOR and other IBORs to alternative risk free rates (RFRs). The derivatives market has been at the forefront of the transition and is some distance further ahead than other financial markets. In particular, ISDA has recently published the 2020 IBOR Fallbacks Protocol and IBOR Fallbacks Supplement, which introduce hardwired fallbacks from IBORs to relevant RFRs for new products and legacy products.

Publication of these documents is a key milestone in the transition journey from IBORs to RFRs, and amounts to the starting gun being fired on what is expected to be a mass market wide repapering and amendment exercise as the market says goodbye to the old world of IBORs and welcomes the new world of RFRs. We expect clients will wish to enter into the IBOR Fallbacks Protocol to amend existing transactions, and to include the IBOR Fallbacks Supplement in new trades. In agreeing to do so, hardwired fallbacks from LIBOR to RFRs will be included in the transactions, which will clearly have a significant impact on those transactions and beyond. Clients are therefore well advised to give careful thought to the issues raised by these documents.

Our briefing (which can be found here) provides a detailed analysis of the two publications, including the issues they raise and how adherence to these documents will affect clients’ existing and future transactions.