The gold holdings of the exchange-traded bearer bond Xetra-Gold (ISIN: DE000A0S9GB0) decreased slightly to 231 tonnes at the end of 2022. This is a reduction of six tonnes over the course of the year.

At the beginning of January 2022, the volume was at 237.9 tonnes of gold. On a 5-year view, there is an increase of 56.8 tonnes, and since December 2012, the volume has increased by 177.3 tonnes of gold.

Xetra-Gold holdings increase whenever investors buy Xetra-Gold shares on the stock markets. For each share certificate, exactly one gram of gold is deposited in the central vault. Xetra-Gold’s assets under custody amounted to €12.7 billion at the end of the year. Xetra-Gold is thus the leading physically backed gold security in Europe.

“While we saw a record high of the gold price in euros in the first half of 2022, few investors took this as an opportunity to take profits in the second half of the year – for example, to react to the multiple challenges from the turnaround in interest rates as well as the energy crisis. Accordingly, Xetra-Gold volume declined slightly by 2.9 percent to 231 tonnes in the course of last year”, says Steffen Orben, Managing Director of Deutsche Börse Commodities GmbH, the issuer of Xetra-Gold.

Xetra-Gold investors are entitled to the delivery of the securitised physical gold. Since the launch of Xetra-Gold in 2007, investors have made use of this right 1,745 times. To date, 7.6 tonnes of gold have been delivered.

In September 2015, the German Federal Fiscal Court determined that gains from the sale or redemp-tion of Xetra-Gold after a minimum holding period of one year would not be subject to withholding tax. Thus, the purchase and redemption or selling of Xetra-Gold is to be assessed for tax purposes as a direct purchase and sale of physical gold – such as gold bars or gold coins.

Xetra-Gold is issued by Deutsche Börse Commodities GmbH, a joint venture of Deutsche Börse AG and Commerzbank AG, Deutsche Bank AG, DZ Bank AG Deutsche Zentral-Genossenschaftsbank, B. Metzler seel. Sohn & Co. KGaA and Vontobel Beteiligungen AG. Umicore AG & Co. KG, a group subsidiary of Umicore S.A., is also involved.