Sector developments and company hires

Synthetic Libor settings confirmed
The UK FCA has confirmed that to avoid disruption to legacy contracts that reference the one-, three- and six-month sterling and Japanese yen Libor settings, it will require ICE Benchmark Administration to publish these settings under a 'synthetic' methodology, based on term risk-free rates, for the duration of 2022. However, these six Libor settings will be available only for use in some legacy contracts and are not for use in new business.

The synthetic rate has been chosen by the FCA to provide a reasonable and fair approximation of what panel bank Libor might have been in the future. The synthetic rates will no longer, however, be 'representative' as defined in the Benchmarks Regulation (BMR).

The methodology the FCA will require Libor’s administrator to use for calculating these synthetic rates is forward-looking term versions of the relevant risk-free rate, plus the respective ISDA fixed spread adjustment. The six Libor settings will become permanently unrepresentative of their underlying markets from 1 January 2022 and the first non-representative publication under their 'synthetic' methodology will be on 4 January 2022.

The FCA will decide and specify before year-end which legacy contracts are permitted to use these synthetic Libor rates.

In other news…

Global
Nigel Batley has been appointed as a global representative of Lord Capital through NIB Advisors, his independent consultancy company. He will focus on introducing the firm’s balance sheet management and professional control party product to clients predominantly in markets other than the Americas. Batley was previously global head of asset-backed finance at HSBC, which he joined in 1987.

North America
Scott Soussa is set to join Angelo Gordon as chief strategy officer in April 2022, reporting to Josh Baumgarten and Adam Schwartz, the firm’s co-ceos. Soussa was previously a senior md at Blackstone and formerly co-head of BAAM’s strategic capital group. Prior to joining Blackstone in 2003, he was controller of Lava Trading, a securities trading technology company.