How the International Gold Market Plans to Reform Gold Pricing System

After last month’s news that London banking and financial giant Barclays was fined £26 million, or $45 million, after one of its ex-traders admitted to purposely manipulating the price of gold, the World Gold Council decided to convene on how to fix the fixed gold pricing system Monday, July 7.

According to The Telegraphthe World Cold Council’s forum included representatives from virtually all areas of the gold industry, including bullion banks, exchange traded funds, refiners, exchanges and even mining companies.

These representatives, along with the four banks that determine the market price of gold twice daily — Barclays, HSBC, Canada’s Scotiabank and Societe Generale of France — discussed things participants want in the reform, alternative pricing models and whether or not the reform should modernize the current price-benchmark process, according to Sky News.

“We are at the start of a process that will lead to a reformed and modernized gold benchmark which attracts a broader range of market participants,” Natalie Dempster, World Gold Council managing director for central banks and public policy, said. “We believe it should be based on executed trades and a tradable price, it should have highly transparent input data, should be calculated from a deep and liquid market and represent a physically deliverable price.”

“A high-end commodity demands a high-end protocol to ensure trust for the entire gold industry” says Licia Gray of CashNGold.

Whether the price of gold will increase or decrease over time as a result of these reforms remains to be seen — but it is clear that the world’s major banking centers are making changes to modernize the way the price of gold is determined.

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