INTERVIEW-AngloGold
brushes aside Swiss sales
12:28 p.m. Apr 20, 1999 Eastern
By Ed Stoddard
JOHANNESBURG, April 20
(Reuters) - South Africa's
AngloGold, the world's largest
gold miner, on Tuesday brushed
off the likely sale of 1,300 tonnes
of gold by Switzerland's central
bank, saying such a move had long
been anticipated.
''This is already in the pipeline,''
Kelvin Williams, an executive
director with Anglo, told Reuters.
''The Swiss made the first
announcement in this regard over
two years ago. It is old news for
the market.''
Swiss sale plans, yet to be finally
sanctioned but given the blessing of
voters at the weekend, would
involve shedding up to half of the
country's 2,600 tonnes of official
holdings.
This would drop Switzerland to
sixth in the gold holding league
behind the United States, the
International Monetary Fund
(IMF), Germany, France and Italy.
The market took the news in its
stride, with gold fixing in London at
$284.20 a troy ounce, unchanged
from the same time on Friday. It
was trading at $284.00 late on
Tuesday.
Williams said the fact that
Switzerland's central bank planned
to keep the glass half full was
encouraging, noting that it had no
incentive to see the value of an
asset in its possession decrease.
''If they plan to keep half of their
gold reserves, they will sell the rest
in a gradual, orderly fashion,'' he
said. ''They have no interest in
driving the price of gold down to
$50.''
''And we feel the same way about
the IMF sale...it is not a material
amount,'' he said.
The IMF has plans to sell off part
of its 103 million ounces of gold,
but no firm decision or date has
been fixed yet.
Williams also said Anglo had
picked up strong signals from
European central bankers that they
were in no hurry to ditch their
bullion reserves.
''We feel that European Union
central bank sales have stopped
for now. That is certainly the
impression we have been given by
the banking community,'' he said,
adding that like Switzerland,
Europe's central banks had no
interest in seeing a valuable asset
lose value.
Anglogold's shares closed 1.42
percent lower at 278.00 rand on
the Johannesburg bourse on
Tuesday amid a generally
depressed gold market. The gold
index closed 2.08 percent lower at
1,010.6.
Copyright 1999 Reuters Limited. |
