Pari passu

The JC’s guide to pithy Latin adages Go Premium Latin Comments? Questions? Suggestions? Requests? Insults? We’d love to 📧 hear from you. Sign up for our newsletter.

A gloriously baffling Latin expression which means, literally, “side by side”; “at the same rate” or “on an equal footing”. In the context of capital structure of a securities issuer, it usually denotes debt claims or securities that share seniority with senior unsecured debt.

See also

• debt security