goldmoney.com / By Alasdair Macleod / 06 March 2015
This month the physical gold market will undergo radical change when the four London fixing banks hand over the twice-daily fix to the International Commodity Exchange’s trading platform on 20th March.
From 1st April the Financial Conduct Authority will extend its powers from regulating the participants to regulating the fix as well. This will transfer price control away from the bullion banks allowing direct access to the fixing process for all direct participants and sponsored clients.
From this flow two important consequences. Firstly, the London market is changing from an unregulated to a partially regulated market, reducing room for price manipulation. And secondly, the major Chinese state-owned banks, assuming they register as direct participants, have the opportunity to dominate the London physical market without having to deal through one of the current fixing banks. No announcement has been made yet as to who the direct participants will be, but it is a racing certainty China will be represented.
Implications of becoming a regulated market
Under the current regime a buyer or seller on the fix has to deal through one of the four fixing bullion banks. The information gained by them from seeing this business is crucial, giving them a quasi-monopolistic trading advantage over all the other dealers. Instead, buyers and sellers will be anonymous during the auction process.
The new platform should, therefore, ensure equal opportunity, eliminating the advantage enjoyed by the fixing banks. Crucially, it will change market domination from the privileged fixing members in favour of the deepest pockets. These are almost certain to be China’s through the state-owned banks which already control the largest physical market in Asia, the Shanghai Gold Exchange (SGE).
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