Dive Brief:
A Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) subcommittee recommended as a “market best practice” that interdealer brokers switch trading of linear interest rate swaps from the London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR) to the Secured Overnight Financing Rate (SOFR) beginning July 26.
The recommendation by the CFTC’s Interest Rate Benchmark Reform Subcommittee is aimed at speeding the adoption of SOFR, which has yet to gain widespread acceptance as a replacement for LIBOR, the reference rate for trillions of dollars in business loans, derivatives and other financial contracts worldwide. U.S. regulators have called on banks to stop using LIBOR in new contracts by the end of this year.
Dive Brief:
Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden, D-Ore., launched an investigation into the global tax practices of AbbVie, asserting that the pharmaceutical company used the 2017 changes in federal taxation and overseas havens to reduce its tax rate from 20% in 2016 to a 9.5% average from 2018 to 2020.
The committee probe will focus on how the 2017 law, passed with overwhelming Republican support, allowed AbbVie “to further abuse tax havens and avoid paying taxes on U.S. prescription drug sales.”
“Instead of using the massive tax cuts given to AbbVie by the 2017 tax law to reduce drug prices for American families, AbbVie has instead chosen to provide a $10 billion windfall to investors by substantially increasing the amount of money it spent buying back its own stock,” Wyden said in a June 2 letter to AbbVie CEO Richard Gonzalez.