EU bank proposals 'risk domino sequence of failures The risk is that bail-in rules that are too prescriptive become unusable and therefore won't be credible. France, following concerns from its banking sector, including SocGen and BNP-Paribas, has expressed concern at the whole concept of making creditors assume losses, a position supported by some British banks, understood to include Barclays. Under European Commission proposals, all depositors, including unsecured deposits of more than €100,000, would be given "preference" for having their money paid back, shifting the losses to bondholders in a troubled bank. A study carried out by the commission, and seen by The Daily Telegraph, has found that exempting all depositors from losses would increase the write-down burden for senior bondholders more than threefold. With a binding "depositor preference," as proposed, senior bondholders, usually other institutional investors, would be the hardest hit, with a 25pc write-down of a troubled bank's assets translating into losses as high as 83pc of their stake. The commission argues that "depositor preference" is already the rule in more than half of G20 countries, including the US, alongside studies finding that it does not raise the overall cost of funding for banks. Eurozone finance ministers last night moved towards piecemeal eurozone banking union, with the European Central Bank as supervisor, and common rules on bank resolution by this summer, putting decisions on German calls for treaty change to one side.