LIBOR Administrator Historical Lookup Tool
Select a year to determine which organization was responsible for calculating and administering the LIBOR rate at that time.
Responsible Organization:
Understanding the Governance of LIBOR: A Historical Perspective
The London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR) was, for decades, the world's most widely used benchmark for short-term interest rates. It served as the reference rate for hundreds of trillions of dollars in financial products globally, from complex derivatives to standard adjustable-rate mortgages. Understanding who was responsible for calculating this rate is crucial to understanding its history, its eventual scandal, and its ultimate discontinuation.
The calculation of LIBOR was not done by a central bank or a government agency. Instead, it was managed by private industry bodies whose responsibilities changed significantly following the financial crisis of 2008 and the subsequent rate-rigging scandals.
The Era of the British Bankers' Association (BBA)
From its formal inception in 1986 until early 2014, the organization responsible for the governance and calculation of LIBOR was the British Bankers' Association (BBA).
During this period, the rate was officially known as "BBA LIBOR." The process involved a survey of panels of major banks. Every morning, the BBA would ask these banks at what rate they could borrow funds from other banks in the London wholesale money market across various currencies and maturities.
The BBA's role was to collect these submissions, trim the highest and lowest quotes (usually the top and bottom 25%) to eliminate outliers, and average the remaining quotes to produce the daily LIBOR fix. The BBA implicitly trusted that the banks were submitting honest estimates based on actual market conditions.
The Crisis and the Wheatley Review
Following the 2008 financial crisis, investigations revealed that multiple banks had been colluding to manipulate their LIBOR submissions. Banks submitted artificially low rates to appear healthier than they were during the crisis, or coordinated submissions to favor their own trading positions.
This scandal shattered confidence in the BBA's ability to oversee the benchmark. The UK government commissioned the "Wheatley Review of LIBOR" in 2012. The review concluded that the BBA should no longer administer LIBOR and recommended stripping the administration process from the banking industry lobbying group and placing it under new, regulated supervision.
The Transition to ICE Benchmark Administration (IBA)
As a direct result of the Wheatley Review recommendations, the responsibility for administering LIBOR was transferred from the BBA to a new administrator. On February 1, 2014, ICE Benchmark Administration (IBA), a subsidiary of Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), officially took over.
IBA's mandate was to restore credibility to the benchmark. They implemented significant reforms, including moving away from subjective "expert judgment" submissions by banks and toward a methodology based strictly on actual transaction data whenever possible. IBA operated under the regulation of the UK's Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).
The Cessation of LIBOR
Despite IBA's reforms, the underlying market that LIBOR was supposed to measure—the unsecured interbank lending market—had largely dried up since 2008. Banks were no longer borrowing from each other in that manner without collateral.
Regulators globally concluded that LIBOR was no longer sustainable or representative. A phased plan for cessation was put into motion. Most LIBOR currency settings ceased at the end of 2021. The remaining key USD LIBOR settings ceased publication on June 30, 2023. Today, organizations no longer calculate LIBOR for new financial contracts, having transitioned to alternative risk-free rates such as SOFR (Secured Overnight Financing Rate) in the United States and SONIA in the UK.