Goldman’s Libor Transition Chief Exits Ahead of Benchmark’s Retirement
Goldman’s Libor Transition Chief Exits Ahead of Benchmark’s Retirement
(Bloomberg) -- The executive tasked with disentangling Goldman Sachs Group Inc. from the London interbank offered rate is leaving the firm after 20 years.
Jason Granet’s retirement was announced this week by the firm’s global treasurer, Beth Hammack, in an internal memo seen by Bloomberg. Ditching the discredited benchmark is one of the biggest challenges facing global lenders, with most major banks spending more than $100 million this year on cleansing it from their operations.
No replacement for Granet has been selected but the team will remain in place and be overseen by Hammack, according to a person familiar with the matter who declined to be named.
“We are confident that the transition team’s efforts have prepared the firm and our clients well for the transition which is well underway,” Hammack said in emailed comments. “The team, under my direction, will continue to remain engaged with regulators and our clients as we move through the transition and into a world without Libor.”
Granet declined to comment.
Global regulators announced plans to do away with Libor in 2017, following a manipulation scandal and shortage of underlying trading data. There’s been widespread support for a system that automatically switches hundreds of trillions of dollars worth of derivatives to replacement rates. And earlier this month New York Governor Andrew Cuomo signed into law a measure that will help prevent hundreds of billions of dollars of financial contracts from descending into chaos when the benchmark ends.
Goldman and other banks still face challenges, especially around porting over old contracts that may struggle to transition. The firm said in March it was evaluating what to do with about $29 billion of debt and preferred stock it issued that’s pegged to dollar Libor and doesn’t mature until after the discredited benchmark expires in mid-2023.
The bank is considering buying back obligations via tenders and calls or swapping the securities through exchange offers, as well as amendments to credit agreements or triggering provisions that shift instruments to new benchmarks.
Granet joined in 2000 as an analyst in fixed-income operations and rose through the ranks to positions including deputy head of liquidity solutions at Goldman Sachs Asset Management. He became a managing director in 2012.
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