Following a paper recommending that the Canadian Dollar Offered Rate (CDOR) be discontinued, the benchmark’s administrator has launched a consultation on its future.
Refinitiv Benchmark Services (U.K.) Ltd. published a consultation paper asking whether it’s time to wind down CDOR in the face of industry questions about its viability.
Last December, an industry group that was convened to oversee the reform of financial benchmarks, the Canadian Alternative Reference Rate (CARR) working group, recommended that CDOR be discontinued.
The group’s white paper concluded that “certain aspects of CDOR’s architecture will pose risks to its future viability and robustness,” and recommended that it stop being produced by June 30, 2024.
While the industry group recommended the benchmark’s termination, it also declared that the ultimate decision on its future rests with Refinitiv, as the benchmark’s administrator.
In response, Refinitiv launched a consultation to solicit direct feedback from benchmark users, market participants and others on CDOR’s future.
The review of CDOR comes in the wake of global reforms to financial benchmarks over the past few years following a series of market manipulation scandals.
In some cases, those efforts culminated in major benchmarks, such as LIBOR, being discontinued altogether. LIBOR largely ceased on Dec. 31, 2021, apart from U.S.-dollar LIBOR, which is due to end on June 30, 2023.
In a statement, CARR welcomed the consultation on CDOR’s future, and called on firms to provide their views to Refinitiv. The deadline for feedback is Feb. 28.
The International Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA) also published a statement stressing that the consultation doesn’t mean CDOR will necessarily be eliminated, and so it doesn’t constitute an “index cessation event” under its fallback provisions.