Cecabank leaves the Euribor panel and ESMA says the benchmark holds
Victoria Shinder1 min readESMA has issued a statement on changes to the Euribor panel in its role as supervisor of the European Money Market Institute, the benchmark's administrator. EMMI has announced that Cecabank, based in Spain, will withdraw from the panel, with 30 September 2026 its final day contributing input data.
ESMA and the national competent authorities in the Euribor College of Supervisors assessed the effect of the departure on how well Euribor represents the euro unsecured money market, and concluded that it does not pose a risk to representativeness. The regulator notes that the panel has been enlarged over the same period, with four banks added since 2022 including KBC Bank in May 2026, and continues to encourage credit institutions active in the market to join.
What it means
A benchmark panel is a quorum problem. Euribor is calculated from what a fixed set of banks report, so each departure narrows the base the rate is inferred from, and the supervisor's job is to say at which point the number stops describing the market. Publishing that assessment when a bank leaves - rather than only when the panel is in trouble - is what makes the eventual warning credible.
The four additions since 2022 are the more interesting half. Panel membership costs a bank submission infrastructure and regulatory exposure for no direct revenue, so growth in the panel is a sign that the compliance burden has been made bearable, which is the only lever a supervisor actually holds here.