Of a regulated financial institution, the capital level below everything else than gives comfort to the creditors — in particular, its depositors — that those debts will be met. The most obvious type of tier one capital is the institution’s share capital — “tier 1 common equity”. But also is alternative tier 1 capital, also known as AT1, eighty-one, which takes the form of contingent convertible securities (“co-cos”). It became clear in March 2023 when Credit Suisse finally gave up the ghost, that many in the market, including its AT1 investors, didn’t fabulously understand how it worked. (In fairness to them, it wasn’t obvious, even though it was written into the terms and even the title of the AT1 Notes).
The Jolly Contrarian’s Glossary
The snippy guide to financial services lingo.™
From our machine overlords
Here is what, NiGEL, our cheeky little GPT3 chatbot had to say when asked to explain:
Tier 1 capital is the core capital of a bank. It is the most “reliable” form of a bank’s capital — reliability being in the eye of the beholder — and is composed of equity capital, disclosed reserves, and certain non-redeemable subordinated securities called “AT1s”, which can be converted to common equity or written off if the bank’s capital ratio falls through a trigger.
Tier 1 capital is is used to absorb losses without the bank being required to cease operations. When opportunistic AT1 investors find this out, they get mad.
Disclaimer: NiGEL’s a neural network, he drinks a lot, and he spends too much time on the internet, so if you listen to anything he has to say you only have yourself to blame.
Come to think of it, that is also true of the JC in general.
