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The term bullion bank can be applied to banks which are involved in some or all of the following activities in the precious metals markets: trading, clearing, vaulting, physical metal distribution, risk management, intermediating between metal lenders and borrowers, mine finance and hedging, financing fabricators, providing consignment stocks, generating precious metals market research. This list is not exhaustive.
Bullion Banking is Fractional Reserve Banking for Gold
The core concern with contemporary bullion banking is that it is a fractional reserve system in the same way as commercial ‘cash’ banking is. The bullion banking fractional reserve system also supports highly leveraged trading. Furthermore, the bullion banking fractional reserve system is opaque since there is very little transparency into the banks’ activities in this market.
Nowadays, regular banks also create money out of thin air on the asset side of their balance sheets when they engage in lending. This activity of lending actually brings new money into existence. The key point here is that modern-day bullion banking system operates in the same way as regular fractional reserve banking operates, the only difference being that contemporary bullion banking brings large amounts of paper gold into existence.
In contemporary bullion banking, the amount of gold circulating in the bullion banking system is not fully backed by physical gold. It’s only fractionally backed, and in some cases may be unbacked. The lack of data divulged by the LBMA and its regulators makes complete analysis difficult. You might think, I can see how new fiat currency can be created out of thin air since its either printed or credited electronically, but gold can’t be created out of thin air, can it? The answer is that, in the modern bullion banking system, “gold” can be created out of thin air, and is created out of thin air, as a form of paper gold or synthetic gold.
Services for Mining Companies
Bullion banks provide a number of services for mining companies such as lending gold to those mining companies which then repay this gold in the future out of their future gold production. Some bullion banks also enter into long-term purchase contracts with gold mines to buy their mining output, and some bullion banks finance projects for gold mining companies, structure hedging programs for the same companies, and manage the mining companies’ price risk using spot, forwards, and options contracts.
Physical Trading
A number of bullion banks act as Authorized Purchasers for mints such as the US Mint, or refineries such as Rand Refinery. Some bullion banks are active in making markets in gold coins, such as Commerzbank. In fact, Commerzbank also owns a share in a large Swiss precious metals refinery, namely Argor-Heraeus.
Given the structure of the modern bullion banking sector, a number of concerns become apparent. These concerns are explained in the remainder of this article below:
https://www.bullionstar.com/gold-university/bullion-banking-mechanics#heading-3