by Annabelle Williams
City AM
China’s decision to buy its second gold storage vault in London last week was another step towards total dominance of the market.
The vault is in a secret location and was bought by Chinese state-owned bank ICBC Standard Bank from Barclays. It could store $90bn of gold at today’s prices, and follows the purchase of a lease on another vault in the capital earlier this year from Deutsche Bank.
London has been a hub for metals investment for hundreds of years, but times have changed and the big banks are pulling back from trading them.
Now China is pushing into the gold market in a big way.