07.04.202600:53 Forex Analysis & Reviews: Bank of France Moves Its Gold Out of US Control

The French central bank discovered an elegant way to withdraw some of its gold reserves from US storage without creating diplomatic noise: it simply sold the metal at a profit in New York and then bought it back in Europe. In publishing results for the 2025 financial year, the central bank reported an "exceptional item" that enabled it to turn a loss of €2.9 billion into an annual profit of €8.1 billion. "Income from assets held on the bank's own account increased by €12.2 billion due to the exceptional item," the Bank of France stated in its press release on March 25. "In 2025 and early 2026, despite the volume of gold reserves not changing, the Bank of France had to align the remaining portion (5%) with technical standards, resulting in significant realized currency gains. This exceptional currency income amounted to €11 billion for 2025."

This move proved both strategic and extremely profitable. Unlike the ongoing story involving Germany's large gold reserves in the US, which still lie in the vaults of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and cause dissatisfaction among some politicians, the Bank of France did not raise the question of repatriating its reserves. Instead, it waited for gold prices to rise to historical highs, sold old, less pure bars in New York at the market price in US dollars, and then used the proceeds to purchase new bars in Europe that met the updated standards of weight and purity, all while prices were declining.

As a result, the French central bank achieved a classic win-win scenario: no political conflict with the US administration amid tensions over tariffs, Greenland, Ukraine, and now Iran; no transportation and insurance costs across the Atlantic; and finally, significant profits from the operations that strengthened the Bank's balance sheet. "The net capital of the Bank of France—meaning its own funds plus unrealized capital gains on assets—remains extremely robust at €283.4 billion compared to €202.7 billion in 2024," the report states. "The net capital also includes the revaluation reserve of state gold and currency reserves (RRRODE) amounting to €11.4 billion to cover future cash expenses."

Francois Villeroy de Galhau, the head of the Bank of France, told reporters that the decision to keep the new bars in Paris rather than New York was "not politically motivated." The total volume of France's gold reserves remained unchanged at around 2,437 tons after these transactions, and the entire gold stock of the country is now stored in the underground vault of the Treasury Bureau in La Souterraine.