For the Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing (HKEX) to be successful in its plans for gold trading, longer trading hours are needed as mainland and international customers are likely to need 24-hour servicing, according to leading traders in the yellow metal.

The World Gold Council is working with the Indian government on plans to create a local physical spot-gold exchange that may start up as soon as next year.

London Metal Exchange, a subsidiary of Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing, will launch gold and silver spot and futures trading in London on July 10 in a bid to capture the increasing demand for trading of precious metals in London, the exchange said on Monday.

The launch of the London Metal Exchange's new precious metals contracts will be delayed until July 10, more than a month later than previously announced, it said on Monday.

The new gold and silver contracts, a mix of daily and monthly contracts designed to enable industrial users to hedge specific dates, were due to go live in early June.

But the LME decided to delay the start "in the interests of maximizing market readiness and participation", it said in a statement on Monday, adding that some prospective participants had indicated that they would not be ready to participate fully in the contracts until the July date.

London's gold price benchmark fixed some $12 below the spot price on Tuesday afternoon as the auction appeared to become locked in a downward spiral.

From an initial $1,265.75, close to the spot price at the time, the auction price ratcheted steadily lower before fixing at $1,252.90 in the ninth round. From the fifth round to the eighth the bid and offer volumes remained frozen, unable to match.

CME lowers gold margins by 12.5%

Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) is set to launch clearing for London's benchmark gold price auction before participants are ready as it races to prevent rivals muscling in on the city's $5 trillion-a-year bullion market, market and banking sources said.

Some banks will start testing a new bullion-trading platform next week as part of the London Bullion Market Association’s push to make the city’s over-the-counter market more modern and transparent.

Several banks will be asked to input mock trades into the platform built by Autilla Inc. which will then feed into a new trade data repository developed by Boat Services Ltd., Autilla Chief Executive Officer Mike Greenacre said. Testing may take up to four weeks and the platform may start around late March.

Some of the biggest names in finance are fighting for control of the London gold market -- a $5 trillion, three-century-old trading hub that is being forced to adapt to a digital age.

As the London Bullion Market Association revamps over-the-counter trades that are the market’s major pricing benchmark, new ways of buying and selling precious metals are set to start next year from CME Group Inc., Intercontinental Exchange Inc. and the London Metal Exchange. Some big banks have stakes in the outcome, including Goldman Sachs Group Inc., HSBC Holdings Plc and JPMorgan Chase and Co.

“There are four weddings, and we have to dance at all of them, because we don’t know which marriage will last,” said Adrien Biondi, the global head of precious metals at Commerzbank AG in Luxembourg. “Only one will win.”

The UBS confirmed this morning at the request of Tagesanzeiger.ch/Newsnet. The special switches were closed at the three locations immediately. It was a business policy decision. For customers, two things change. The current product range will be streamlined, and the "most common bars and coins for sale and purchase" would be ready, UBS writes in an intranet message. The range would also be reduced at all other branches.

As a second change, customers have to sell their bars and coins when selling at the normal counter, and then wait two to three working days until the bank carries out the appropriate credit, subject to a quality check.