Dutch central bank moves 86 tonnes of gold to London

The Dutch central bank said it moved 86 tonnes of gold reserves from the United States and Canada to London, citing increasing geopolitical unrest and a need to make the reserves easier to use in a crisis.

DNB said gold held in London can be traded more easily than reserves held in New York and Ottawa. DNB President Olaf Sleijpen said the move had improved the deployability of the reserves and strengthened preparedness, while adding that the bank assumes it will never need to deploy the gold.

The Netherlands had 612.4 tonnes of gold worth €72.2 billion at the end of 2025, DNB said. Before the transfer, 31.3 percent of the reserve was held in New York and 19.7 percent in Ottawa. After the move, each location held 18.5 percent, while London's share rose from 18.1 percent to 32.1 percent. DNB said 30.8 percent remains in the Netherlands.

DNB said the transfer was carried out partly through buying and selling and partly by physically moving gold. More than 27 tonnes of physical gold was moved from the United States and Canada to Zeist, and the same quantity was moved from Zeist to London, avoiding the need to melt down gold bars. The bank said combining transactions and physical transport spread the risks of moving a large quantity of gold.

The operation took place between March and August, DNB said.

Laurent Schwartz, president of the Paris-based National Gold Counter, told AFP that central banks have been moving reserves around for about a decade and that the current political context in the United States might push some central banks toward other storage locations. He said the London market is the deepest and most liquid.

John Plassard, an analyst at Cite Gestion Private Bank, told AFP the Dutch move was aimed at making gold more immediately available in a crisis. He said it was a fairly one-off move for now, but that similar moves by other central banks could damage confidence in the United States.

Germany's Bundesbank told public broadcaster ARD in January that the New York Fed remains an important storage site for its gold, after concerns were raised in Germany about the security of central bank reserves in New York.