A daily private meeting between bankers representing five institutions conducted over the phone with conversations lasting anywhere between minutes to hours. The purpose? To determine the going price of gold for the day. Sounds too “private” and unregulated to be happening anywhere outside a movie? Think again, because that’s how gold prices are set up every day in London since 1919.

Are you wondering whether such an arrangement does not leave too much room for inside information to circulation giving unfair advantages to the parties involved? So do dealers and economists in Britain. The U.K. Financial Conduct Authority is investigating into the manner by which prices in the $20 trillion gold market are set during these meetings, according to some sources. The benchmark rate, known as the London fix, is used by mining companies, jewellers, and central banks alike for the purchase, selling and valuation of the precious metal, and is published twice daily following the telephone calls between Barclays Plc (BARC), Deutsche Bank AG (DBK), Bank of Nova Scotia, HSBC Holdings Plc (HSBA) and Societe Generale SA. (GLE)

The process has come under fire recently as it is to be giving an unfair advantage, first to the participants of these meetings, who can trade gold an its derivatives on the spot market and exchanges even while the calls are in progress and negotiations developing, causing a spike in gold derivatives just after the fixing starts. Then, there are also the clients of the banks involved in the fixing talks who get first reports of the meetings’ content and bet on the final outcome.

The privileged knowledge that the London gold-fixing system offers to the parties involved in the process which is far superior to anyone else’s knowledge on the market constitutes a great flaw.

leit, chief economist at Frankfurt-based precious-metals broker Degussa Goldhandel GmbH and a former economist at Barclays. “That is the great flaw of the London gold-fixing.”