Germany, Gold & Diplomacy
By GCRU Gold News on Saturday, January 3 2015, 22:53 - Permalink
In 2012 the ‘German Gold’ story started to gather momentum. Early that year, Deutsche Bank purchased (in joint venture with G4S) a large site on the outskirts of London, with the intention of building an LBMA-friendly Gold vaulting operation. Deutsche/G4S embarked on a 2-year construction program at the site to build a state of the art warehousing facility. This job was completed when the site went operational in June of 2014.
Just 5 months after completion, on Christmas Eve 2014, Deutsche Bank said (on a slow news day) that their London vaulting facility is now ‘up for sale’. In light of Deutsche Bank’s departure from the London Gold ‘Fixing’ process, and its departure from ‘all physical Precious Metals business’ in 2014, maybe this mooted vault sale isn’t such a surprise.
There is, however, rich and fascinating context to the story of Deutsche Bank, Germany and Gold Custody.