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They point to likely inconsistencies in how banks will be treated under the rules that are being written, not only between European authorities in and outside the euro zone but also in jurisdictions further afield such as the United States.
Even if these problems can be overcome, regulators also fear clearing houses that will increasingly handle deals in the $630 trillion financial derivatives and swaps market could become a new generation of too-big-to-fail institutions.
Policymakers around the world are now forcing banks to build up safety cushions that are big enough that they could ride out a future crisis, or could be allowed to fail without fear of setting off a systemic meltdown.
The policymakers are putting their faith in two measures:
Under an initiative of the Group of 20 leading industrial and developing economies, the world's top 30 lenders - many of them European such as Deutsche Bank and HSBC - must issue bail-in bonds. But rules being created by national and pan-national regulators to cover a wider range of banks may differ.
In the euro zone, the newly-launched Single Resolution Board (SRB) will decide on the quantity of bail-in bonds that the top 150 banks based in the currency bloc must issue. But elsewhere in the European Union, such as in Britain, national watchdogs will set the rules. The same goes for decisions on whether to close down a bank.