Some of the world’s largest banks are battling over plans to make London’s $5tn-a-year gold market more transparent in the biggest shake-up of global bullion trading for decades.

A consortium that includes Goldman Sachs, arguably the most influential bank in commodity markets, and ICBC, the big Chinese lender, are backing plans to bring the trading of precious metals on to an exchange early next year in a shift that reflects that of oil in the 1970s.

Such a move is intended to bring more transparency to the trading of gold, silver and other precious metals — a centuries-old process conducted privately through banks that has been criticised for being opaque.