I analysed Scotia’s annual report back in September 2009 after seeing a blog . . . → Read More: King World News and Scotia Certificates]]> In this interview, Lenny Organ (son of Harvey Organ who was at CFTC hearing) recounts how at a recent visit to the vaults of ScotiaBank they saw little physical precious metals and had to go to some trouble to get physical.

I analysed Scotia’s annual report back in September 2009 after seeing a blog by ispeakofpeak on the issue. At that time the annual report revealed that Scotia only had 43% of its gold and silver certificate liabilities backed by physical metal. The table below updates that post with the most recent report (note: Scotia’s financial year end is 31 Oct, figures in millions of dollars).

Year Ending Liabilities Assets Physical cover
Oct 09 3,856 5,580 100%
Oct 08 5,619 2,426 43%
Oct 07 5,986 4,046 68%
Oct 06 3,434 3,362 98%
Oct 05 2,711 2,822 100%
Oct 04 2,018 2,302 100%

It appears that the physical backing was running down from 2006 but is now back to 100%+, with $5.58 billion of physical. This contrasts with Lenny Organ statement. Either Scotia have run down a lot of physical in 6 months or it is stored elsewhere.

I do find it interesting that the gold and silver certificate liability has declined from $5.619b to $3.856b in the past year, a year when most ETFs, GoldMoney and BullionVault and Perth Mint have shown increasing amounts of metal held.

I agree with Adrian Douglas’ statement in the interview that many storage providers “are very vague about what is backing their paper certificates and if they are vague I think you should not give them the benefit of the doubt”. Contrast this statement from Scotia about their unallocated:

“Scotiabank gold certificates are backed by the assets of The Bank of Nova Scotia. Unallocated gold is a claim on The Bank of Nova Scotia for the ounces entitlement to a specific quantity of gold bullion.”

with the Perth Mint’s:

“With unallocated storage, also known as a metal account, clients purchase an interest in a pool of precious metal held by The Perth Mint. The Mint purchases an ounce of precious metal from the spot market for every unallocated ounce it sells to clients. Accordingly every unallocated ounce is 100% backed. … The Perth Mint is not a bullion bank and does not provide project financing or bullion lending/derivative services to mining companies or other entities. It does not lend client’s unallocated metal to support short selling transactions or other derivative activities. The unallocated metal is utilised solely to fund the Mint’s operations.”

You should always read the fine print.

The Australian newspaper reported over the weekend that the Perth Mint is not taking any more orders for gold until . . . → Read More: Fat Prophets]]> Fat Prophets have been gold bulls for a long time and I give them kudos for that. However, in a recent article The Silent Gold Rush Is On they make the following faulty analysis:

The Australian newspaper reported over the weekend that the Perth Mint is not taking any more orders for gold until January. Our guess is that the Mint does not want to expose itself to higher future prices given that it does not have the inventory to meet the demand for bullion.

I sent the response below to them a couple of weeks ago, no response as yet:

Your guess that we do not want to be exposed to higher future prices is incorrect and is based on a misunderstanding of how the gold markets work. If we take an order and fix a metal price (it is also possible to take an order and agree to fix a price at the time the bullion is ready for delivery) then we immediately buy the raw gold that will be used to make the bars/coins for the client. There is therefore never any exposure the future prices. I discuss this is more detail in my blog on the value chain.

I really wish commentators would just call us up and ask us questions, rather than just guessing or making stuff up.

On thing I really like about the article is the way he distinguishes between physical and paper. His position is that if you don’t hold the physical . . . → Read More: Gold and Silver… How Do I Own Thee?]]> On 5th of April Safe Haven posted an article by a James Macfarlane titled Gold and Silver… How Do I Own Thee?… Let Me Count The Ways.

On thing I really like about the article is the way he distinguishes between physical and paper. His position is that if you don’t hold the physical yourself, you have a counterparty exposure, period. It is a position I hold but have seen very few, if any, make this point. Reading stuff on the internet gives me the feeling that a lot of people seem to think that because allocated is involved in whatever they are buying that somehow it is magically super safe!

The article then comprehensively discusses all the various paper options in a fairly balanced way (unusual these days). However, there are a few inaccuracies in his treatment of the Perth Mint which I discuss below. I have emailed James with the comments below and he was happy for me to publish them here and he will review/respond. The sections quoted in italics are from the article.

I also think the article could breakdown the paper options in a bit more detail. My view is that the risk hierarcy of paper gold products would be (there would be sub risks within the categories depending on the associated legals and trustworthyness of the provider of the service/facility):

Segregated Allocated – physically segregated specific coins and bars (including numbers) in your name.

Unsegregated Allocated – physically segregated gold (usually in bar form) in the name of the storage service provider where title resides with the holders as a group but no one bit of gold is exclusively identified as owned by a specific holder. Examples would be GoldMoney, BullionVault, Central Fund of Canada. ETFs can be included if you believe they have the gold, although considering the lack of accountability in the legals of some they may not qualify for this category from a risk point of view).

Unsegregated Physical Backed – an unsecured claim on a provider where the claim is backed 100% by physical in various forms. This is the strict definition of the Mint’s unallocated. No different to unsegregated allocated except that title to the gold does not directly reside with the holders. Has to be ranked below the one above because the lack of direct title means you are relying on no other problems in the provider’s balance sheet, even if they have 100% gold. In this sense you have true counterparty exposure as commonly understood. In retrospect, the Mint should never have used “unallocated” as this is commonly understood as defined below, which is not what we do.

Unallocated Fully Hedged - an unsecured claim on a provider where the claim is fully hedged by one or all of physical gold, futures, options etc. You are relying on this ability to hedge this properly – physical gold 1:1 is a perfect hedge, anything else is less perfect as it may not be able to be timed exactly with actual liquidations.

Unallocated Unhedged – an unsecured claim on a provider where the provider may or may not hedge the exposure, eg just hold your cash if they think the price is going down, hedge it if they think it is going up, they keep all the profits, if they make losses you are relying on the strength of their balance sheet.

Anyway, my comments to the article are:

“An allocated account is very different. In an allocated account the bullion must exist, and the amount you purchase is stored in your name. You hold actual title to your precious metals. The dealer in this case is guaranteeing that it has the same amount of assets in bullion as there are claims against those assets.”

I would pick a technical detail with this statement about the dealer holding the “same amount of assets”. This is not the strict definition of allocated, which is specific bars or coins in your name. In its most common form, this means you have specific bar numbers allocated to you. This is different to what he then leads in to discuss regarding GoldMoney etc. In fact, allocated at the Mint (or another other depository, eg Delaware Depository) would have to be safer than GoldMoney type systems because clients have title to specific bars or coins, not an “undivided interest in” allocated bars (from GoldMoney’s user agreement). Being undivided, one could argue that GoldMoney is really an unallocated allocated system! I would suggest that for completeness and accuracy true allocated should be separated from “undivided interest in allocated” systems. This is not to say that I think there is any problem with the GoldMoney or Bullion Vault type systems, on the contrary, just that they are different to true allocated in the traditional sense.

“from the Perth Mint in Sydney, Australia”

I think there has been some confusion here as the Perth Mint does not have an office in Sydney, it is based entirely in Perth. I note that at the bottom of the second part of the article the link to the Perth Mint has one of our Perth Mint Certificate dealers who is based in Sydney, so that might account for it.

“there is precious little on the mints’ website indicating how rigorously the allocated accounts are audited, particularly the independent verification that the amount of bullion in storage matches the number of certificates issued. It appears that at least some holdings may be audited by a third party, but the mint never responded to a query as to the details”

The Mint’s FAQ page says “Allocated precious metal holders may inspect or collect their deposits at The Perth Mint … a third party nominated by you will be permitted to audit your deposit on presentation of an acceptable instruction from you to the Client Relations Executive of the Perth Mint Depository. The unsegregated nature of unallocated deposits, which are backed by the working inventory of the Mint, means it is not possible for an individual to audit them. Unallocated investors will need to rely on the Mint’s audited Annual Reports, which are signed off by the State Auditor-General to ensure compliance with the Financial Administration & Audit Act 1985 and the Gold Corporation Act 1987”

Now on looking at our website and annual report, I note that there is no mention of who the State Auditor-General gets to do our audits, which is a bit remiss of us. One can be left with the impression that the Auditor-General’s Department does it, which I would concede is not as strong as an audit by a party independent of the Government. For the record, both our internal and external auditors are independent “big 4” audit firms. In this sense we are therefore no different to GoldMoney and Bullion Vault. In fact, having the State Auditor General appoint an independent auditor adds another layer of control, as the auditor’s work is then reviewed by the State Auditor General.

“the Western Australian government has a law already on the books that allows for all gold to be confiscated”

It is a Federal law, not state. To be balanced I think the article should also have mentioned that this applies to any other storage service as most countries have this risk, whether a law exists in a suspended state as in Australia or a new law needs to be enacted.

“For one thing, you cannot take delivery of your gold without first converting to an allocated account and paying additional fees”

These “additional fees” are simply fabrication and delivery costs, the same that you would pay if you bought allocated in the first place.

“The Perth Mint will not be liable or responsible for delivery delays due to causes beyond its control”

This text is a standard type of force majeure. I would point out that it refers to “delays”, not failure to do it at all. The nature of force majeure is that when the condition that brings it into play has finished, the obligations come back into existence – it is only referring to temporary events. For comparison, note the following similar clauses in the GoldMoney user agreement:

Net-Gold shall not be responsible for errors, negligence or inability to execute orders, nor shall Net-Gold be responsible for any delays in the transmission, delivery or execution of the User’s order due to breakdown or failure of transmission or communication facilities, or to any other cause or causes beyond Net-Gold’s reasonable control or anticipation including (without limitation) volatile markets or trading disruptions.

GoldMoney shall be relieved from its obligations under this Agreement if and to the extent that it is unable to carry out all or any of its obligations hereunder owing to: i. Wars, civil commotion, vis major, act of God, strikes, riots, lockouts, governmental controls or restrictions, non-availability of any equipment or telecommunications or computer systems or any other causes beyond the reasonable control of GoldMoney

I think if one digs into any of the other storage services they will find similar force majeure clauses. This is standard business practice and is not at all sinister. I don’t think people should interpret these as the Mint, GoldMoney or others as trying to get out of their obligations permanently.

Personally I think the article makes the differences between the Mint and GoldMoney and Bullion Vault too wide. The five part process described for GoldMoney also applies to the Mint:

1. The Mint is regulated and supervised just as much if not more than private companies. We have to comply with the same laws that apply to private companies plus the additional requirements of being part of a Government.
2. All bullion we hold is LBMA standard and/or internationally accepted and in the case of work in progress, we can easily make it into LBMA standard.
3. We store it ourselves, so there are fewer counterparties involved and to argue with in the event of any problem.
4. All our metal (unallocated and allocated) is insured by Lloyds, in addition to being guaranteed by the West Australian government.
5. Our accounts are audited by big 4 firms, the audit including verification of physical stocktakes and corresponding unallocated and allocated liabilities.

Nothwithstanding the above, I think the article is worth reading and should be reference material for first time gold buyers, as long as it says nice things about the Perth Mint of course.