Who We Are

Fixing Auctions for Interest Rates Fix (FAIRFix) is the invention of Alaistair Sharp, an interest rate trader in Sterling interest rate markets. Alaistair started work at Chase Manhattan Bank in 1996, joining the Interest Rate Management Group (IRMG). He then moved to Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) in 2001 to boost their Sterling Short Term Interest Rate Trading (STIRT) capabilities in SONIA (Sterling Overnight Index Average) before leaving to join Credit Suisse in 2012 to do likewise. In 2022 He joined Citibank on their Sterling Desk.

He has been one of the main liquidity providers in SONIA (the chosen ARR replacement for GBP Libor) for over two decades, having started trading SONIA in March 1998. He was part of the Working Group on Sterling Risk Free Reference Rates (RFR WG) that chose SONIA as the replacement rate for GBP Libor and chaired the sub working group responsible for producing recommendations for contract specifications for listed derivatives on the new ARR that were subsequently adopted by ICE, CME and CurveGlobal for their ARR futures contracts.

Alaistair has 24 years of experience market making SONIA OIS and has witnessed the evolution of this market from nascence to maturity, including the challenges and pitfalls of introducing a new OIS benchmark to compete with an incumbent, having been one of the main SONIA market makers when RONIA (a Sterling repo overnight fixing similar to SOFR) was introduced (ultimately unsuccessfully) in 2011 as a secured alternative to SONIA. This experience has placed Alaistair amongst one of the very few people to fully understand the evolution of an OIS market and what conditions are necessary for liquidity to develop in the nascent ARR markets such as SOFR and SARON (the Swiss equivalent overnight benchmark).

After initially being against the idea of a term fixing rate, for reasons of robustness and due to conflicts of interest inherent in conventional fixing methodologies, Alaistair was persuaded of the need to modify his views by the comments of Frances Hinden, from Shell’s Treasury Operations (and subsequently also vice-chair of the RFR WG), at an ARR forum at NatWest Markets in 2017. Thus began his quest to develop a viable term fixing methodology for ARR.

By rejecting the focus on what worked for the derivative market and instead concentrating on what the consumer wanted, Alaistair was able to come up with a methodology that didn’t compromise the requirements of end users while still satisfying the concerns of the derivative market.

March 2022