goldcore.com / By Mark O’Byrne / 30 April 2014
Officially, Deutsche stated yesterday that it did not sell its seat in the gold fixing due to a lack of agreement on terms, but given that the last seat at the gold fixing to be sold was by NM Rothschild to Barclays in 2004 for somewhere in the region of £1 million, this type of price level would not seem to be an obstacle for a large investment bank buyer.
Over the last few months, there does not appear to have been any buying interest whatsoever in Deutsche’s silver seat, which begs the question, will the demise of the Silver Fixing come first and would this in turn undermine the rationale for retaining the Gold Fixing?
Now that there are significant regulatory and litigation spotlights on the Fixings, there is a real possibility that it may signal the beginning of the end for this historic price discovery process.
How this would affect gold and silver prices is not known, however, if there is found to be any basis to the price manipulation allegations, the removal of such manipulation would be expected to allow gold and silver prices to move to higher, to more natural price levels.
