That sucks - it also happens to be the protected amount that the EU guarantees and is committed to reimburse the account holders with when a bank fails and go b

That sucks - it also happens to be the protected amount that the EU guarantees and is committed to reimburse the account holders with when a bank fails and go bankrupt. So in one way the customers outcome did not really change from a real bankruptcy, while reducing the risk of crashing the entire bank system in Cyprus, possibly EU and in that case the world. The sum is not extraordinarily high though so I suspect that quite a few rather ordinary people saw their retirement savings evaporate. I also suspect that the bank have been paying dividends to it's shareholders for many years, so it would have been nice to let them bail the bank in one way or another instead of ordinary people - but I doubt that it's possible to do that legally after the fact. The best you can do is to step in and buy the bank for nothing - but that won't remove the debts. I suppose that it would be possible to write laws that make the banks shareholders be responsible for any debts somehow, just like some other types of incorporations - and why not? Owning a bank seems to be pretty risk-free if you can just use your customers money to bail yourself out...