Last week, I reached out to our friend, Ned Naylor-Leyland for a progress report and status update on what we call The NASE (Ned & Andy's Silver Emporium).
First of all, we call it "Ned & Andy's" but that's only because they sometimes act as unpaid consultants on the project. Neither of them have direct involvement and, thus, full status updates can be challenging to acquire. However, last week Ned was able to track down some new information for us.
The gist of this is that the exchange is still being planned and constructed. It has not been permanently shelved like the PAGE (Pan Asia Gold Exchange). The delays have been primarily bureaucratic and, with the Chinese Politburo elections now well behind us, things should begin to move forward again...though likely still not at the pace any of us would prefer.
Anyway, below is a C&P of the email I received from Ned. At this point, I'm just glad that this exchange is still being built and I hope that it becomes a reality sometime later this year.
TF
Firstly I want to reiterate that although Andy (Maguire) and I were invited to
observe the opening ceremony for the Pan Asia Gold Exchange (with flags,
pomp, ceremony and Chinese Politburo members in attendance) neither of
us have any direct involvement day to day - I wish I did, but we are
both dependent on what we are told and although we have input into the
western perspective on an eastern entity, that is about it. 'NASE' is
still due to happen (thankfully) and my Chinese contact was very
apologetic for the amount of time things have taken. My feeling is that
the wealthy Chinese backers of the new exchange rather dropped the ball
last year, although as I pointed out before, the Politburo reshuffle of
last autumn had to pass before any more regional/state confirmation of
licenses could take place. Without being on the ground in China and
privy to the apparently very long legal and technical discussions there
is a limit to what I can sensibly add at the moment.
My contact told me that things are however progressing now, with
substantial domestic interest, especially from the Beijing Gold Exchange
who want to tie into the 'Silver Paper' - he says that the new exchange
is moving ahead with building a new vault in a special economic zone but
are flirting with custody elsewhere initially in order to get the
contract moving - I am against this and have told them so. Either way,
I have said to them that there will be rather limited international
interest if the aforementioned differences to what is already available
in the marketplace aren't clearly obvious, and I have reiterated again
the need for total transparency on the custody/bar numbers etc. I know
the new exchange has a website ready to be filled with the requisite
information, but the details of the contract need to be clearly defined
and posted in there with a timeline to launch laid out before I would be
happy to make any more 'noise' on their behalf. We all look forward to
a fully allocated spot silver exchange, and I hope that this Chinese
group can deliver on it - but like much of Turdville I am currently
forced to wait and see it delivered before getting too excited. I hope
that the natives take this holding pattern update for what it is -
meanwhile I know there are other countries that have similar projects up
and running in the formative stages (no, I now know better than to jump
the gun!) so either way I believe that the idea of full spot allocation
is closer than we may think.
Best as always,
Ned
