Capital structure

The Jolly Contrarian’s Glossary The snippy guide to financial services lingo.™ Go Premium Index — Click the ᐅ to expand: Glossary Comments? Questions? Suggestions? Requests? Insults? We’d love to 📧 hear from you. Sign up for our newsletter.

Of a corporation, the arrangement, priority and ranking of its shareholders, creditors and debentureholders.

Usually, common shareholders at the bottom, then preferred shareholders, then subordinated creditors, then unsecured (aka “ordinary”) creditors, then secured creditors.

That kind of thing.

When you have a convoluted corporate structure — hey: who doesn’t? — then the arrangement between the various entities in your group of shareholdings, inter-company loans, parental guarantees and so on can be quite the game of pan-dimensional chess.