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James Taylor is a partner in the Banking & Finance practice of the London office. James’ practice focuses on public and private offerings of debt and equity-linked securities, advising issuers and underwriters on the standalone issue and offering of retail and wholesale medium term notes, commercial paper, certificates of deposit, warrants, convertible and exchangeable bonds and covered bonds, as well as the establishment and update of platforms for the issuance of multiple types of securities, the structuring of liability management transactions and the provision of ongoing advice on securities laws, corporate governance and stock exchange requirements related to them.

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 The UK Government passed the Financial Services Act 2021 (the “FS Act 2021”) on 29 April 2021, which amended the UK Benchmarks Regulation ((EU) 2016/1011) (the “UK BMR”), to provide the UK Financial Conduct Authority (the “FCA“) with new and enhanced powers to oversee the orderly wind-down of critical benchmarks. In particular, the legislation addresses the risk that LIBOR cessation poses to “tough legacy contracts” (i.e., contracts that genuinely have no or inadequate fallback rate alternatives and no realistic ability to be renegotiated or amended). The Critical Benchmarks (References and Administrators’ Liability) Bill (the “Bill”) has been drafted to address these risks.
Continue Reading The Critical Benchmarks (References and Administrators’ Liability) Bill receives its first reading in the House of Lords

Sterling RFR Working Group Summary Papers

On 16 October, the Working Group on Sterling Risk-Free Reference Rates (“RFRWG”) announced the publication of two documents in their ongoing work to inform and ease the path of transition from IBORs.  The papers summarise the current position in relation to two resources: the beta versions of Term SONIA Reference Rates (“TSRRs”) and risk-free rate (“RFR”) calculators.Continue Reading Sterling Working Group: The Latest Position on RFR Calculators and Beta Term SONIA Reference Rates

The early take-up in 2019 of SONIA in the Sterling floating rate note markets was made possible because SONIA (unlike SOFR and many other risk free rates) was already in use in the well-established market of sterling denominated overnight indexed swaps (OIS).  This fortuitous fact meant that regular issuers of Sterling LIBOR-linked securities could, with