Making a will is regarded by most individuals as a necessary irritant ranking in popularity somewhere below a visit to the dentist or doctor. Following the unprecedented instability in the global financial markets since 2007, “systemic” risk (posed by the potential failure of large or complex cross border financial institutions) was identified by regulators and legislators as one of the key areas requiring better supervision, in order to prevent a similar crisis in the future. This led to a call for banks and financial institutions to set out detailed plans or “living wills” to seek to wind-down their operations in an insolvency scenario with the least impact on the stability of the financial sector.