The Dutch central bank says it has moved 86 tonnes of its gold reserves from the United States and Canada to London, citing “growing geopolitical unrest.” De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB) said gold reserves held in London could be traded more easily than those held in New York and Ottawa. “This makes the DNB able to implement it faster in a crisis situation,” the bank said in a statement on Wednesday. “With this step, we have improved the capacity to deploy gold reserves. We assume that we will never need to deploy the gold, but it is necessary to strengthen our resilience and preparedness,” said DNB President Olaf Sleijpen. Total Dutch gold stocks stood at 612.4 tonnes and were valued at 72.2 billion euros ($83.7 billion) at the end of 2025, the DNB said. Before the deployment, the Dutch bank had 31.3% of its gold in New York and 19.7% in Ottawa. With this move, each country accounted for 18.5% of Dutch gold reserves. The proportion of gold held by London increased from 18.1% to 32.1%. The bank still holds 30.8% of its gold in the Netherlands. The transfer was carried out partly by buying and selling and partly by physical transfer of gold, the bank said. The bank moved more than 27 tons of physical gold from the US and Canada to Zeist. The same amount of gold was moved from Zeist to London, preventing the melting of the gold bars. “The current political context in the United States could also push certain central banks to favor other storage locations,” he said. The London market was the deepest and most liquid, Schwartz said, making it easier to deploy in times of crisis. “John Plassard, an analyst at Cite Gestion Private Bank, said the Dutch move was intended “to have more immediate availability in the event of a crisis.” For the moment, it was a “fairly unique move,” but he warned that if other central banks followed suit, it could damage confidence in the U.S. away from New York. “The New York Fed is and remains an important storage site for our gold,” the bank told public television station ARD in January.
