Euribor

Euribor-12m (red), 3m (blue), 1w (green) value between years 1998 and 2013

The Euro Interbank Offered Rate (Euribor) is a daily reference rate based on the averaged interest rates at which Eurozone banks offer to lend unsecured funds to other banks in the euro wholesale money market (or interbank market).

Scope

Euribors are used as a reference rate for euro-denominated forward rate agreements, short term interest rate futures contracts and interest rate swaps, in very much the same way as LIBORs are commonly used for Sterling and US dollar-denominated instruments. They thus provide the basis for some of the world's most liquid and active interest rate markets.

Domestic reference rates, like Paris' PIBOR, Frankfurt's FIBOR, and Helsinki's Helibor merged into Euribor on EMU day on 1 January 1999.

Euribor should be distinguished from the less commonly used "Euro LIBOR" rates set in London by 16 major banks. Many banks were convicted of Euribor case^[1]

Technical features

Official reference: EURIBOR Technical features

A representative panel of banks provide daily quotes of the rate, rounded to three decimal places, that each panel bank believes one prime bank is quoting to another prime bank for interbank term deposits within the Euro zone, for maturity ranging from one week to one year. Every Panel Bank is required to directly input its data no later than 10:45 a.m. (CET) on each day that the Trans-European Automated Real-Time Gross-Settlement Express Transfer system (TARGET) is open. At 11:00 a.m. (CET), Reuters will process the Euribor calculation and instantaneously publish the reference rate on Reuters pages 248-249, which will be made available to all its subscribers and to other data vendors. The published rate is a rounded, truncated mean of the quoted rates: the highest and lowest 15% of quotes are eliminated, the remainder are averaged and the result is rounded to 3 decimal places. Euribor rates are spot rates, i.e. for a start two working days after measurement day. Like US money-market rates, they are Actual/360, i.e. calculated with an exact daycount over a 360-day year. Euribor was first published on 30 December 1998 for value 4 January 1999.

Panel Banks

The contributors to Euribor are the banks with the highest volume of business in the euro zone money markets. As of 20 September 2012, The panel of banks contributing to Euribor consists of 44 banks:^[2]

• Banks from EU countries participating in the euro from the outset.
• Banks from EU countries not participating in the euro from the outset.
• Large international banks from non-EU countries but with important euro zone operations.

Interest rate swaps

Interest rate swaps based on short Euribors currently trade on the interbank market for maturities up to 50 years. A "five year Euribor" will be in fact referring to the 5 year swap rate vs 6 month Euribor. "Euribor + x basis points", when talking about a bond, will mean that the bond's cash flows have to be discounted on the swaps' zero-coupon yield curve shifted by x basis points in order to equal the bond's actual market price.

Eonia

The other widely used reference rate in the euro-zone is Eonia, also published by the European Banking Federation, which is the daily average of overnight rates for unsecured interbank lending in the euro-zone, i.e. like the federal funds rate in the US. The banks contributing to Eonia are the same as the Panel Banks contributing to Euribor.

See also

• Euro
• European Banking Federation
• Prime rate
• Federal funds rate
• EONIA
• SONIA
• SARON
• MUTAN
• LIBOR

References

External links

• European Central Bank
• Euribor homepage
  • Euribor historical data (informative)
• Euribor Page on Wikinvest
• Euribor Rate, Daily Update (Bank of Finland)

Euribor reference rates are published on the Moneyline Telerate pages 248–249 and 47860–66. Informative historical data can also be found at the Euribor homepage.