London Bullion Market Association

The London Bullion Market Association (LBMA) is a London-based trade association that represents the wholesale over-the-counter market for precious metals in London. The association's work encompasses many areas, including refining standards, good trading practices and standard documentation. The gold, silver, platinum and palladium price auctions take place in London daily. All of these prices are used internationally as the pricing mechanism for a variety of precious metal transactions and products.
The LBMA holds the intellectual property rights to the silver and gold fixes, and the Intercontinental Exchange manages the gold price on the LBMA's behalf, through the ICE Benchmark Administration. The new LBMA-ICE gold price fixing method replaced the London Gold Fix, a pricing mechanism that had been around since 1919. Gold was the last of the precious metals to switch to an electronic platform for price determination. The new method launched on March 20, 2015.
The new LBMA Gold Price is set twice daily—at 10:30 Greenwich Mean Time and 15:00 GMT, which currently is 6:30 a.m. Eastern time and 11 a.m. EDT—in dollars, euros and sterling. The LBMA had been working on a process of accreditation for gold price participants, and working closely with IBA to prepare the LBMA Gold Price mechanism for its launch on Friday, March 20, 2015. The first LBMA Gold Price under the new system settled at $1,171.75 an ounce.
Goldman and UBS joined Barclays, HSBC, Bank of Nova Scotia and Societe Generale as participants in the new London Bullion Market Association Gold Price benchmark. 
The LBMA has stringent criteria for assaying standards and bar quality that an applicant must satisfy in order to be listed.
== History ==
The LBMA was formally incorporated in 1987 in close consultation with the Bank of England, which was the bullion market’s regulator at that time. The primary regulator for the bullion market in the UK is now the Financial Services Authority (FSA), with which the Association maintains a close working relationship.
London is the focus of the international over-the-counter (OTC) market for gold and silver, with a client base that includes the majority of the central banks that hold gold, plus producers, refiners, fabricators and other traders throughout the world.
The market’s structure and cooperation between members began in 1897 with the London Silver Fixing; the London Gold Fixing was initiated in 1919.
In November 2018, the LBMA for the first time released the size of its membership’s share of the Loco London and Loco Zurich OTC precious metals market, which had a daily average turnover for gold of $36.9bn and $5.2bn for silver. The amount was between 3 and 6 times lower than previous World Gold Council estimates, and showed, to some people's surprise, that the New York gold market is actually larger than London's.
== Products and Services ==
The LBMA Good Delivery List is recognized as representing the de facto standard for the quality of gold and silver bars, in large part thanks to the stringent criteria for assaying standards and bar quality that an applicant must satisfy in order to be listed.
== Membership ==
The LBMA has more than 120 companies in 20 countries as members, all of whom have activities closely related to the London market in gold or silver bullion. These activities include trading, broking, shipping and storage, mining and refining, inspection, and assaying and research. Membership on the part of individuals is not permitted.
Full members must be companies or organizations actively involved in the London bullion market; this means trading gold or silver bullion or related derivatives such as forwards and options. A number of full members have been reclassified as market makers.
Members include:
The Bank of Nova Scotia - ScotiaMocatta; Barclays Bank PLC; Deutsche Bank AG; Goldman Sachs International; HSBC Bank USA National Association; JP Morgan Chase Bank; Mitsui & Co Precious Metals Inc; Royal Bank of Canada; Société Générale; UBS AG
== Key People ==
*Ruth Crowell, Chief Executive
*Dr Paul Fisher, Chairman
*Mehdi Barkhordar, Vice Chairman
*Ed Blight, Chief Finance Officer
== References ==