New York Federal Reserve President John Williams warned financial firms against “sticking their metaphorical heads in the sand”, as a deadline to replace the scandal-tainted Libor benchmark approaches.
Regulators have frequently urged markets to move off the London Interbank Offered Rate, or Libor, by the end of 2021 and to instead price loans and other financial instruments with reference to rates that better reflect market conditions. Mr Williams said he was concerned that some institutions were not moving fast enough to reduce their reliance on Libor.
“Some say only two things in life are guaranteed: death and taxes,” said Mr Williams at a conference in New York on Monday. “But I think there are three: death, taxes, and the end of Libor.”