文档介绍：Living Wills as a Catalyst for Action Emilios Avgouleas, Charles Goodhart and Dirk Schoenmaker February 2010 Abstract Living Wills should help the resolution of a cross-border financial institution in difficulties by clarifying and simplifying the legal structure, and making that legal mensurate with the functional business parts of the wider institution. An innovation could be to incorporate a proposal for burden sharing between countries in Living Wills. This may enable burden sharing on an institution by institution basis. There remain, however, problems arising from the inconsistencies and patibility of the laws relating to the insolvency procedures in the various countries. Many countries are currently introducing special laws covering the process of resolution of systemically important financial institutions. This creates a window of opportunity to introduce a consistent legal basis for the resolution of systemically important financial institutions across the G20 countries. 2 1. Introduction Following the 2007-2009 financial crisis, there is much concern about the massive bail-out costs of the financial sector. How can one reduce moral h azard and rein back expectations of future bail-outs? The too-big-to-fail doctrine has been re inforced, if anything, by the handling of the current financial crisis. We believe that the autho rities, under the exceptional circumstances in late 2008, had no choice but to support the financi al system and thus to keep credit flowing to the wider economy. At this stage (December 2009), w e may draw the preliminary conclusion that the support for the financial system and the b roader fiscal stimulus for the economy have averted a full-blown depression, which was a real t hreat at the end of 2008. Amongst the proposals to curtail the too-big-to-fai l practice, we believe that the concept of Living Wills is a promising beginning; its further development might allow systemically important banks to fail or