Few people know that Zürich became the gold center of the world in 1968 when the London Gold Pool collapsed and the London gold market stayed closed for two weeks, while markets in other countries continued trading with increasing gold prices.

The Zürich Gold Pool was founded in 1968 by the largest banks in Switzerland. The establishment was triggered by the temporary closing of the London bullion market which marked the collapse of the London Gold Pool, a system of maintaining the Bretton Woods System of fixed-rate convertible currencies and defending a gold price of US$35 per troy ounce by interventions in the London market. As a reaction to the temporary closure of the London gold market in March 1968 and the resulting instability of the gold markets and the financial systems in general, Swiss banks acted immediately to minimize effects on the Swiss banking system and its currency by establishing a private gold trading organization, the Zürich Gold Pool, which helped in establishing Zürich as a major trading location for gold.