It is far from difficult to argue that the London interbank offered rate (Libor) is in serious need of replacement. Since its inception in 1969, as a mechanism by which a group of London-based banks could agree a floating rate of interest on an $80 million loan for the central bank of Iran, it has evolved remarkably little. The same cannot be said of the market it underlies, which is now estimated to have a notional value of around $350 trillion. Whether one looks at the 2012 manipulation scandal, or the fact that markets for many of the funding rates Libor purports to measure barely exist anymore, it is impossible to escape the evidence that arguably the most important benchmark in the financial markets is no longer fit for purpose. A change is...