Silver pricing goes electronic

By Nicholas Larkin
Resource Investor / Bloomberg

silcoins120The silver-pricing method begun during the reign of Queen Victoria ends today in London as the $5 trillion market shifts to a more transparent process and regulators expand scrutiny of how commodity benchmarks are set.

An electronic, auction-based mechanism will replace a ritualized negotiation among a few traders that’s been in place for 117 years. Silver becomes the first of the precious-metals markets to ditch a daily “fixing” procedure where dealers agree to a price over the telephone. Revamps also are planned this year for fixings in gold, platinum and palladium.

Coeur Mining Inc., the largest U.S. silver producer, says changing an outdated pricing method will enhance confidence in a benchmark used as a reference for trading and valuing holdings. Since the 2008 financial crisis, regulators have uncovered price-rigging in everything from interbank-loan rates to currencies, increasing pressure on tradition-bound commodity markets from gold to oil to expand transparency.

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