Based on documents in the public domain to which we refer below, we consider that there are good grounds to believe that members of six well-known financial services groups combined together to manipulate the outcome of the London Gold Fixing between about 2004 and 2014 and that members of four of those groups combined to manipulate the outcome of the London Silver Fixing between about 1999 and 2014. The effect of this was to create false market prices, in particular by artificially depressing prices after the 3pm (London time) Gold Price Fixing and to increase bid-offer spreads in physical gold, physical silver and their respective derivative instruments. The relevant institutions did this to increase their profits from their own activities in these markets at the expense of other market participants who have therefore suffered loss and damage, probably running into hundreds of millions of pounds in aggregate.

If it can be established that these financial institutions participated in price fixing then we consider that there can be little doubt that they have breached section 2 of the Competition Act 1998 and are liable to pay damages to any other market participant that suffered loss and damage as a result.