From 2006 the Bank of England’s Annual Report has declared the quantity of gold in its custody, including the UK’s own 310 tonnes. Prior to that date a diminishing quantity of on-balance sheet gold (sight accounts) was recorded in the audited accounts, which then disappeared. This tells us that sight accounts (where the BoE acts as banker and not custodian) were dropped. This is sensible, because the BoE is no longer directly liable to other central banks while gold prices are rising.
Of course, the BoE doesn’t hold just central banks’ gold; it also holds gold on behalf of LBMA members. However, LBMA storage at the BoE is probably a fairly small part of the total, because the bulk of settled transactions are in unallocated accounts where the underlying owner does not own physical metal, and the majority of transactions are closed even before settlement is due. Furthermore LBMA members have their own storage facilities or use independent vaults. So to all intents we can regard the BoE’s custody gold as owned by central banks.
It should be borne in mind London is the most important market for physical delivery, particularly for central banks. For this reason most central banks buy, sell, swap or lease their monetary gold in London. The exceptions are Russia, China and the central Asian states who have been the main buyers of gold – always from their own mine output – and do not ship this gold to London; and having substantial foreign reserves from trade surpluses, they have no requirement to do so.
To add to our analytical difficulties, the custody figures presented are net of gold being leased, because leased gold is delivered out of custody. We know that the BoE encourages its central bank customers to pay for its expensive storage charges by earning leasing income, thanks to an unguarded admission from the Austrian central bank last year that it had defrayed its storage costs this way, and a Bundesbank statement that it withdrew gold from London rather than pay high storage fees. The BoE’s custody total is therefore a net figure, with significant quantities of gold out on lease and not actually in custody. However, we can derive some interesting information given the headline custody numbers and some reasonable assumptions.
We can therefore draw up a tentative table as follows:
About the Author
Alasdair Macleod is head of research for GoldMoney. He also runs FinanceAndEconomics.org, a website dedicated to sound money and demystifying finance and economics. He has a background as a stockbroker, banker and economist. He can be contacted at Alasdair.Macleod@GMYF.org and followed on Twitter @MacleodFinance.