After a long, illustrious but finally tumultuous and problem-riddled course starting in the Sixties, LIBOR – the London Interbank Offered Rate – was phased out in mid-2021 and is ending now, in mid-2023 as the main instrument helping the Euromarkets to develop and flourish, hosting an overhang of dollar liquidity (Eurodollars) and allowing for massive finance to be made available to businesses from London as a central global financial place.

The financial engineering behind this financial phenomenon was largely the artifact of a Greek (or rather a Crete-born), international banker, who worked initially for Manufactures Hanover, Minos Zombanakis. FT veteran journalist and financial expert David Lascelles wrote The story of Minos Zombanakis: Banking without borders published, in 2011 by Kerkyra Publications-economia Publishing. He set out the main steps for the emergence of the Eurodollar trade.

The birth of the Euromarkets

Soon after WWII, banking regulations at the US caused large deposits of dollars to cross the Atlantic and remain in Europe – mainly in London, which gradually became a central financial place for the post-War world. Businesses in need of capital, but also state entities operating as international borrowers, addressed themselves to this large pool of liquidity.

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