Banking

Credit Suisse’s bond problem and what it means for taxpayers

With its demise, certain Credit Suisse bondholders were wiped out. Shareholders were not. This is not how bank failure is supposed to work.

The ordinary course of events – that shareholders would have losses imposed in full before anyone else – was completely upended.

The failure of banking institutions creates winners and losers. In the aftermath of the last financial crisis fifteen years ago, it was the Irish taxpayers that were the undoubted losers when the State guaranteed the banks. Reforms have been undertaken at EU and international level to ensure that in the future, no such excessive burden is placed on taxpayers.

The current instability in the global banking sector and the collapse of two American banks, Silicon ...