The credibility of bail-in

Alessandro Di Stefano, Yvan Lengwiler and Kumar Rishabh

No 1356, BIS Working Papers from Bank for International Settlements

Abstract: The resolution framework for global systemically important banks has been over a decade in the making. The failure of Credit Suisse (CS) in March 2023 was its first major test. Authorities had a resolution plan in place but chose a different path amid financial stability concerns. They facilitated a takeover of CS by UBS, backed by public guarantees. Additional Tier 1 (AT1) bonds were written down in full; bail-in creditors, who would bear losses next under resolution, were left whole. We study how this episode reshaped bail-in credibility across Europe. Using bond-level data from 94 banks in 22 countries, we trace the repricing of AT1, bail-in, and senior debt over the subsequent year. AT1 spreads moved in line with jurisdiction-specific reg ulatory signals, while bail-in spreads and credit default swap subordination premia narrowed across the board, consistent with markets assigning a lower probability to bail-in. Lower-rated banks saw larger spread declines, and investor responsiveness to firm-specific disclosures fell, pointing to reduced market discipline. This evidence suggests the CS episode weakened bail-in credibility.

Keywords: bank resolution; capital regulations; bail-in credibility; Credit Suisse (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: G01 G12 G14 G21 G28 G33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-06
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