The UK's FCA has already announced its decision to allow 1- and 6-month sterling LIBOR to cease at end-March 2023 and on 23 November 2022 they have announced that 3-month sterling LIBOR will continue to be published (as a non-representative rate) until end-March 2024, after which it will also cease permanently. It's not surprising to hear that there will be no more synthetic sterling LIBOR after end of March 2024, the market was expecting it - it should give enough time for those last stragglers to get amended (floating rate notes being the largest pool of legacy instruments to be affected by this).
For US dollars, the FCA has concluded that there is a case for requiring publication of the 1-, 3- and 6-month synthetic US dollar LIBOR settings for a short period of time until end-September 2024. That means overnight and 12-month US dollar LIBOR will cease from end of June 2023.
The FCA is proposing to use CME Term SOFR plus the relevant ISDA fixed spread adjustment as the methodology for these synthetic US dollar LIBOR settings and permitting use of these synthetic US dollar LIBOR settings in all contracts except cleared derivatives. They are consulting on these proposals and if past experience is anything to go by then it is likely that this will be put into place. The big caveat is still there - parties must not rely on these rates being available and must continue their efforts to remediate their legacy book.
I recently heard that the USD LIBOR has crept up above Term SOFR plus ISDA CAS for the first time - hopefully this will give the market an incentive to speed up amending their contracts. There isn't a moment to lose - as I have said before - LET'S GET AMENDING!
Further details
Further consultation and announcements on the wind-down of LIBOR | FCA
CP22/21: Consultation on 'synthetic' US dollar LIBOR and feedback to CP22/11 | FCA
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