In finance, seniority refers to the order of repayment in the event of a sale or bankruptcy of the issuer.
Seniority can refer to either debt or preferred stock.
[1] Each security, either debt or equity, that a company issues has a specific seniority or ranking.
Bonds that have the same seniority in a company's capital structure are described as being pari passu.
The seniority of bonds recognised in FpML (Financial products Markup Language) are as follows: