The Swiss National Bank, one of the world’s biggest owners of gold, was forced to admit it took a loss of $17 billion on their gold holdings for 2013. This is by far the largest loss in gold anyone has ever seen. The gold loss forced the Swiss central bank to cancel dividends for the first time in its 107-year history.
The Zurich-based Swiss central bank stated publicly that the record-breaking low prices last year in gold caused its holdings to lose value, dropping more than $17 billion in a single year. In 2013, the gold collapsed 28%, the most since 1981 and unless gold gets through the 1450 level, it may yet see new lows again one more time.
The $17 billion loss on gold was marginally offset by a $5.9bn gain on its foreign currency positions and a $3.9bn profit from assets’ sales. Hence, the bottom-line loss for the year was $10.4 billion.
This staggering loss on gold is so massive, the right-wing Swiss People’s Party campaign to force the central bank keep at least 20% of its precious metal reserves has taken a serious hit. The Party has recently collected 100,000 signatures supporting a future referendum on a ruling to prohibit the bank from selling any of its gold reserves. Yet with this huge loss, the general public may move the opposite way opening the door for sales of Swiss gold reserves.
