The Hague (AFP) – The Dutch central bank said Wednesday it had moved 86 tonnes of its gold reserves out of the United States and Canada to London, citing “increasing geopolitical unrest.” The DNB bank said gold reserves held in London could be traded more easily than those held in New York and Ottawa.
“This makes it the quickest for DNB to deploy in a crisis situation,” said the bank in a statement. “With this step, we have improved the deployability of the gold reserves. We assume that we will never need to deploy the gold, but it is nevertheless necessary to strengthen our resilience and preparedness,” said DNB President Olaf Sleijpen.
The total Dutch gold stock amounted to 612.4 tonnes and was valued at 72.2 billion euros at the end of 2025, said the DNB. Before the deployment, the Dutch bank held 31.3 percent of its gold in New York and 19.7 percent in Ottawa. After the move, each country accounted for 18.5 percent of the Dutch gold reserve. The share of gold held in London increased from 18.1 percent to 32.1 percent. The bank still holds 30.8 percent of its gold in the Netherlands.
The transfer was carried out partially by buying and selling and partly by physically transferring gold, said the bank. The bank moved more than 27 tonnes of physical gold from the United States and Canada to Zeist. The same quantity of gold was moved from Zeist to London, preventing the melting down of gold bars. “By combining buying and selling and physical transport, the risks associated with physically moving a large quantity of gold have been spread,” said the DNB. The operation took place between March and August of this year, the bank said.
– ‘Deepest and most liquid’ –
Laurent Schwartz, president of the Paris-based National Gold Counter, which facilitates gold trading in France, said central banks had been moving their reserves around for about a decade. “The current political context in the United States might also push certain central banks into favouring other storage locations,” Schwartz told AFP. The London market is the deepest and most liquid, said Schwartz, making it easier to deploy in times of crisis. “Central banks can more easily lend their gold there to other banking institutions,” he added.
John Plassard, analyst at Cite Gestion Private Bank, told AFP the Dutch move was intended “for there to be more immediate availability in the event of a crisis.” For the moment, it was a “fairly one-off move,” but he warned that if other central banks followed suit, it could damage confidence in the United States. At the beginning of the year, there were concerns raised in Germany about the security of their central bank’s reserves in New York. However, the powerful Bundesbank has decided for the moment not to shift its reserves away from New York. “The New York Fed is and remains an important storage site for our gold,” the bank told public TV station ARD in January.
© 2024 AFP
