Legaltech News, an American Lawyer Media publication, quoted Chicago partner Clayton Stallbaumer in a June 1, 2020, story about financial institutions leveraging legal and technology expertise to prepare for the coming replacement of the London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR) in 2022.
The LIBOR rate is found in hundreds of thousands of financial contracts worth an estimated $220 trillion, Legaltech News reported. That means technology will be vital in helping institutions prepare for the transition to LIBOR’s replacement rate, Stallbaumer said.
“We saw a real opportunity for technology to help our clients transition from LIBOR in an efficient way,” Stallbaumer explained. “The problem they have is it’s a volume and timing issue. We’re roughly 18 months from LIBOR going away, and a lot of our institutional clients have thousands of documents that reference LIBOR. As we were talking to clients about this, there seems to be a real opportunity to use certain types of technology.”
McGuireWoods’ LIBOR Transition Blog tracks key regulatory and market developments relating to the LIBOR transition, as well as potential replacement rates, such as Secured Overnight Financing Rate, or SOFR.