South Africa police standoff with illegal gold miners escalates
The police sealed off access to the Buffelsfontein gold mine in Stilfontein several weeks ago to deny the miners access to food and other essentials.
The London Gold Fixing Ltd has set up a new supervisory to oversee the pricing of the precious metal following a series of regulatory probes into price rigging.
The company’s new board is made up of compliance officers at the four banks that currently operate the gold “fix”, Reuters reports.
The near-century-old practice saw the banks set the price twice daily after telephone conferences, but will it now operate under more strict regulations.
London Gold Fixing Ltd has also put out requests for proposals to find a new company to administer the price benchmark.
The move comes amid heightened regulatory scrutiny of financial benchmarks, and follows a recent shake up to the silver fix.
The Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), which recently won the silver fix, has confirmed its intentions to bid for controlling the gold price setting process as well.
The industry has been pushing for a change as of late. Members of the World Gold Council met in London earlier this month to discuss the issue, but did not reach an agreement.
Financial benchmarks have come under strong scrutiny from regulators around Europe and the United States since 2012, when it became public that British banks had rigged the London Interbank Offered Rate (Libor).
In January Deutsche Bank announced its exit from the price-setting process, amid investigations by German regulators over suspected price manipulation.
5 Comments
paula mathis
The London gold fix members should come under strict fiduciarry regulations.
Guest
I don’t trust the CME to “Fix” the price of Silver or Gold, because then the Large Speculators and Hedge Funds will overpower everyone else to get what they want, namely, a Bear Market in Gold and Silver so as to continue the Uptrend in Stock Equity Prices in the DJIA , COMP, DJT, and DJU due to the obvious strong Negative Correlation resulting from the misconception that a growing U.S. economy is bad for Gold & Silver prices — which is in blatant disregard for the fact that Gold & Silver Jewlery Sales, accounting for 40% of Gold usage, benefit by an enriched Middle Class resulting from a strong U.S. economy enhancing Discretionary Spending ! July 25, 2014 at 10:12 a.m. PDT.
Bob
Current participants have already proven them selves to be untrustworthy, and should be eliminated from consideration. They do not want to, and will not change.
The politicians and federal judges that might have previously have been counted on for oversight have already been bought and paid for, so expect no redress from that quarter. Same for the castrati CFTC, SEC, regulators. What a pathetic pack of eunuchs.
There need to be clear cut penalties for violating the public trust. Jail time. meaningful fines, and full admission of guilt and wrongdoing.
Who is the idiot that ever allowed “no admission of wrongdoing” to accompany fines for obvious wrongdoing anyway? Must have been one of those previously mentioned bought and paid for federal judges.
The process will remain DE-formed until it gets RE-formed.
Mary May Wellbeloved
As an Industrialist spanning a career of 40 years in a variety of industries, it has been my experience that companies sell their products if they conform to the quality and price sought by customers and are able to deliver against these criteria at a profit if their organization is properly structured and motivated to perform competitively. Capitalistic markets are driven by these
principles and price setting will happen automatically. Price Fixing in
any form works against these principles, so why are we doing this for
Gold? It makes no sense.
James Bond
If the gold price is going to be fixed then the gold price is going to keep being F@#ked.