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The sale of UK gold reserves was a policy pursued by HM Treasury over the period between 1999 and 2002, when gold prices were at their lowest in 20 years, following an extended bear market. The period itself has been dubbed by some commentators as the Brown Bottom or Brown's Bottom.〔(Goldfinger Brown's £2 billion blunder in the bullion market, ''The Times'', 15 April 2007 )〕〔(The outlook for gold, ''The Daily Telegraph'', 19 December 2008 )〕〔(The Gold Bull Market Remembers How Gordon Brown Sold Half of Britains Reserves at the Lowest Price, The Market Oracle, Clive Maund, 1 April 2007 )〕〔(The Significance of the IMF-RBI Gold Sales, Tim Iacono, GoldSeek.com, 5 November 2009 )〕〔(In 2008, Gold Should Glitter, James Turk, SFO magazine, February 2007. )〕〔(China & IMF Gold Sales; The Real Story, Warren Bevan, gold-eagle.com, 23 June 2009 )〕 The period takes its name from Gordon Brown, the then UK Chancellor of the Exchequer (who later became Prime Minister), who decided to sell approximately half of the UK's gold reserves in a series of auctions. At the time, the UK's gold reserves were worth about US$6.5 billion, accounting for about half of the UK's US$13 billion foreign currency net reserves. ==Events== The UK government's intention to sell gold and reinvest the proceeds in foreign currency deposits, including euros, was announced on 7 May 1999, when the price of gold stood at US$282.40 per ounce〔 (cf. the price in 1980: $850/oz 〔(Chart of gold 1968–99 )〕) The official stated reason for this sale was to diversify the assets of the UK's reserves away from gold, which was deemed to be too volatile. The gold sales funded a like-for-like purchase of financial instruments in different currencies. Studies performed by HM Treasury had shown that the overall volatility of the UK's reserves could be reduced by 20% from the sale. The advance notice of the substantial sales drove the price of gold down by 10% by the time of the first auction on 6 July 1999.〔 With many gold traders shorting, gold reached a low point of US$252.80 on 20 July.〔 The UK eventually sold about 395 tons of gold over 17 auctions from July 1999 to March 2002, at an average price of about US$275 per ounce, raising approximately US$3.5 billion.〔(Gold: Does Gordon Brown's regret selling half of Britains' gold reserves 10 years ago?, The Daily Telegraph, 8 May 2009 )〕 To deal with this and other prospective sales of gold reserves, a consortium of central banks - including the European Central Bank and the Bank of England - were pushed to sign the Washington Agreement on Gold in September 1999, limiting gold sales to 400 tonnes per year for 5 years.〔 This triggered a sharp rise in the price of gold, from around US$260 per ounce to around $330 per ounce in two weeks,〔 before the price fell away again into 2000 and early 2001. The Central Bank Gold Agreement was renewed in 2004 and 2009. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Sale of UK gold reserves, 1999–2002」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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