Germany's central bank has successfully moved $27.9 billion worth of gold bars from New York and Paris to Frankfurt in a Hollywood-style transfer.

The Bundesbank announced Wednesday that it had shipped the last of the gold it had been storing at France's central bank, Banque de France, in Paris, completing the final stage of a four-year operation ahead of schedule.

The procedure, one of the largest of its kind, was expected to complete in 2020. Cold War fears that the gold could fall into Soviet hands was just one of the reasons the precious metal was stored overseas. The gold stored in Paris was held to be converted into francs in the case of an emergency but now both countries share the same currency.

Germany's Bundesbank had been storing 674 tonnes of gold bars at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and Banque de France but initiated a plan in 2013 to return the bars to Frankfurt.