De Nederlandsche Bank said on 2 September that it had moved roughly 86 tonnes of gold out of New York and Ottawa and into London, in a series of steps running from March to August this year. The Dutch central bank holds 612.4 tonnes in total, valued at €72.2 billion at the end of 2025. After the shift, its reserves sit 32.1 per cent in London, 30.8 per cent in the Netherlands, and 18.5 per cent each in New York and Ottawa.
Most of the movement was accounting rather than freight. About 59 tonnes were sold in New York and repurchased in London. The remainder — more than 27 tonnes — travelled physically from North America to the bank’s site at Zeist, with a similar quantity then moved from Zeist to London. Only part of the transfer, in other words, involved a convoy.
Central banks are not in the habit of explaining where they keep their bullion, which is what makes the release worth reading closely. The reason given is neither price nor politics but plumbing: the bank wants the reserves liquid and saleable, spread across locations, and available if a crisis ever required them. London is the deepest physical market for gold in the world, and moving metal there is chiefly a decision about being able to trade it quickly. The bank’s own headline calls this an improvement in tradability. The word doing quiet work in the release is the acknowledgement that the repositioning comes in view of increasing geopolitical unrest.
“With this relocation, we have improved the tradability of our gold reserves. We expect that we will never need to use them, but we do need to strengthen our resilience and preparedness,” said Olaf Sleijpen, the bank’s governor.
What the bank has done is durable and dull in the best sense: a reserve that could be sold in a hurry is worth more, in a crisis, than one that merely exists. Whether other European central banks read the same logic the same way is a question the next few months will answer.