Financial Benchmarks: Bedeutung, Problematik und regulatorische Ansätze

Financial benchmarks have become important reference points in the global financial market guiding worldwide obligations in financial contracts in the amount of hundreds of billions of US-Dollars. Since July 2012, after the attempted manipulation of Libor became known, the issues of credibility and representativeness of such widely used financial benchmarks are in the spotlight of the global community.

An international reform process was initiated under the auspices of the G20, coordinated by the Financial Stability Board (FSB). This led in particular to the IOSCO Principles from 2013 to make financial benchmarks more solid. Additionally, after consultation of a market participants group, the FSB recommended to promote alternative (risk-free) reference points to the most important financial benchmarks, given that certain transactions are better suited to these alternatives. In Switzerland, already two alternative rates exist, namely the so called TOIS fixing and the SARON.

The European…