BIS - Look into the BIS past - gold shipments 1938-1945

Note on gold shipments and gold exchanges organised by the Bank for International Settlements,
1st June 1938 - 31st May 1945

Basle
9th September 1997

"Ever since the Bank for International Settlements was founded in 1930, gold transactions have formed part of its normal business operations. These transactions, undertaken for the Bank's own account or for the account of its customers (central banks and international institutions), have always included:

1. the purchase and sale of gold on the international gold market for the BIS's own account or for the account of customer central banks;

2. the operation of a de facto gold clearing, through the transfer of gold between the gold sight accounts held by the different central banks with the BIS;

3. the organisation of physical gold shipments and the organisation of gold exchanges between different depositories ("location swaps") for the BIS's own account or for the account of customer central banks.

This paper concerns the third category of these transactions. It deals with all gold location exchanges - both physical shipments and location swaps between depositories - organised by the Bank for International Settlements from 1st June 1938 to 31st May 1945, whether for its own account or for the account of its customers. The focus of this paper is on factual data: the exact dates on which individual transactions were carried out, the exact amounts of gold involved, the locations in which gold was held and from which or to which it was shipped, and the counterparties involved. In order to show that these gold transactions formed part of the BIS's normal business activities, the period under consideration here was extended so as to include at least one full pre-war financial year. The transactions undertaken from 1st June 1938 to 31st June 1940 are simply listed. Those that took place after June 1940, that is after most of Europe had come under German domination, are described in somewhat greater detail.

Chronology:

Period 1: from 1st June 1938 to 31st August 1939
   Gold shipments organised by the BIS
   Gold exchanges organised by the BIS

Period 2: from 1st September 1939 to 30th June 1940
   Gold shipments organised by the BIS
   Gold exchanges organised by the BIS

Period 3: from 1st July 1940 to 31st May 1945
   Gold shipments organised by the BIS
   Gold exchanges organised by the BIS

Source: http://www.bis.org/publ/bisp03.pdf