Critical reflections on bank bail-ins

Emilios Avgouleas, Charles Goodhart

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract / Description of output

Many of the world’s developed economies have introduced, or are planning to introduce, bank bail-in regimes. Both the planned EU resolution regime and the European Stability Mechanism Treaty involve the participation of bank creditors in bearing the costs of bank recapitalization via the bail-in process as one of the (main) mechanisms for restoring a failing bank to health. There is a long list of actual or hypothetical advantages attached to bail-in centred bank recapitalizations. Most importantly the bail-in tool involves replacing the implicit public guarantee, on which fractional reserve banking has operated, with a system of private penalties. The bail-in tool may, indeed, be much superior in the case of idiosyncratic failure. Nonetheless, there is need for a closer examination of the bail-in process, if it is to become a successful substitute to the unpopular bailout approach. This paper discusses some of its key potential shortcomings. It explains why bail-in regimes will fail to eradicate the need for an injection of public funds where there is a threat of systemic collapse, because a number of banks have simultaneously entered into difficulties, or in the event of the failure of a large complex cross-border bank, except in those cases where failure was clearly idiosyncratic.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)3-29
JournalJournal of Financial Regulation
Volume1
Issue number1
Early online date3 Feb 2015
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Mar 2015

Keywords / Materials (for Non-textual outputs)

  • Bank failures
  • Bank bail-ins
  • bailouts
  • BRRD
  • Orderly Liquidation Authority
  • Dodd Frank
  • Single Point of Entry

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