The current global financial and economic turbulence has apparently triggered an acute loss of memory to some of our industry’s players, generating melancholic calls for a return to the “remedies of the past” – ignoring that certain historical market-management practices are patently illegal today and are not in anyone’s best interest. Read More...

Please meet Sarah Winterton, the Secretary of CIBJO Europe. She is in charge of implementing CIBJO’s strategy to achieve an EU-wide diamond terminology legislation, followed by the eventual adoption of a worldwide standard for synthetics nomenclature and diamond grading. Read More...

Governments have committed hundreds of billions of dollars to stabilize the world’s financial systems. A back of the envelope exercise shows that the commitments have passed the trillion dollar level and that is still an insignificant figure compared to the trillions that have been vaporized by falling stock prices and bank write-offs. Read More...

“Liquidity risk management is of paramount importance, because a liquidity shortfall at a single institution can have system-wide repercussions,” the governor of the Dutch central bank, Dr. Nout Wellink said. Forget about the underlying causes of the current economic crisis, what actually brought down giant banks in a matter of hours was that they had no cash. Read More...

While the financing problems within the diamond industry pale in comparison to the credit crunch in the international markets, the remarkable events of the past week also saw a drama around Fortis Bank and its ABN AMRO ‘stepchild’ for which new parents are now being sought. Read More...

Last week’s column on the erosion of the effectiveness of the Kimberley Process, on the organization’s need to stop wasting time on trivial, technical infringements (caused by human error), and our call for the KP to start addressing the real macro-issues, generated an avalanche of responses.  Read More...

Something axiomatic in our industry: you don’t publicly talk about matters that might affect consumer confidence. It is politically incorrect to even remotely disturb what De Beers’ Gareth Penny likes to call “The Diamond Dream.” It is also politically incorrect to talk about kickbacks, bribes and corruption related to diamond trading. Read More...

The diamond industry’s lexicon has dramatically changed during the past few years. Domestic beneficiation, added-value... Read More...

In October 1997 a “mutiny” took place. It was when the honorable David N. Magang, then Botswana’s Minister of Minerals, Energy and Water Affairs, gave a speech in which he pointed out that some of the interests of De Beers and Botswana were shared but others were clearly different. Read More...

My computer dictionary defines the word “trivia” (singular: trivium) as "unimportant (or 'trivial') items, especially of information." In the late 20th century, the expression came to apply more to often obscure information of the kind useful almost exclusively for answering quiz questions. Read More...