Cross-border resolution hinges on trust

Work to develop a cross-border recovery and resolution regime is progressing, but the need for individual regulators to sign co-operation agreements is seen as a potential problem. It boils down to trust – and that worries some participants. Michael Watt reports

The machinery of bank recovery and resolution is industrial in its scale – bail-in bonds that will raise vast sums of capital, living wills that describe how to wind up a globe-spanning leviathan, and resolution authorities with the strength to use these levers. But, when it comes to the final, crucial question of how authorities in different countries will ensure the painless demise of a cross-border bank, the whole contraption appears to be driven by something rather more ephemeral – trust.

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