Gregor Gregersen: Keynote: Shortcomings and Scandals in Bullion Storage
Gregor discusses the pitfalls and dangers of storing precious metals in unallocated accounts. Using unallocated accounts is very common in the industry. You have no guarantees to any particular bullion, and there is significant counterparty risk if the bank or vault you are storing with has financial difficulties.
Gregor is founder and owner of Silver Bullion SG which is located in Singapore. They have a high-tech, audited, and publicly transparent method of securely holding your bullion assets. Customer assets are segregated and not part of their balance sheet.
He discusses examples of banks like Morgan Stanley, who have been sued for not holding customer assets even though they charge customers storage fees. People believe they own something, but they don’t. How do you know the bullion exists just because you have a statement doesn’t mean you have any rights to real gold.
When Warren Buffett took delivery of physical silver in 1998, the commodity brokers had to scramble to acquire 130 million ounces of silver. The future market couldn’t quickly deliver on this, so they had to purchase it from the open market. If you are storing metals, you will want to make sure that your gold hasn’t been encumbered in some way by being sold or leased multiple times over.
Silver Bullion SG is currently storing 250 million in bullion for customers and have around 90 million in peer to peer loans. With this loan system, customers can securely and easily borrow or lend against their assets.
Time Stamp References:
1:00 – Intro and Gregor’s background.
6:00 – Scandals in bullion vault holdings.
8:00 – Futures & Warren Buffet
12:00 – Future Price Settings of Commodities.
16:00 – The crisis case for bullion.
18:20 – Silver Bullion SG storage solution.
Talking Points From This Week’s Episode
• Gregor has a bullion vault storage business in Singapore.
• Loans can be taken out against your gold at low interest.
• Make sure your assets are allocated and not encumbered.
• Physical bullion demand has little impact on pricing.
• Paper markets have broken bullion pricing.
Gregor Gregersen is the founder and owner of Silver Bullion SG and Safe House Depository, a premium bullion dealer and storage facility in Singapore. Gregor has a background in finance and software development.