Over the past few months, authorities have taken their first steps to end some of the public support measures put in place in response to the financial crisis; thus, the exit that the OECD’s Committee on Financial Markets discussed at its last few meetings has actually begun. The present article focuses on government guarantees for bond issues. Financial institutions have made extensive use of such bond issuance: in the period October 2008 to May 2010 close to 1400 guaranteed bonds have been issued by approximately 200 banks from 17 countries, for an amount equivalent to more than €1 trillion. In part reflecting the nature of the strains that the banking sector was exposed to and the specific structure of the banking system, the design of the guarantee schemes differed across jurisdictions.[...]