It was at a press conference at a diamond congress in London where former De Beers managing director first formulated the company’s zero-tolerance policy on reputational issues. In the scoring system for Sight allocations, “reputation” is a “pass/fail” proposition – it is not subject to a... Read More...

Chaim Even-Zohar is spending Thanksgiving in Singapore, and does not want to interrupt anyone's dinner with a troubling memo. Please accept his warmest Thanksgiving wishes. Have a nice weekend. Read More...

Irrespective of whether New York-based M. Fabrikant & Sons will go Chapter 11, Chapter 7, or whether the company will end up flourishing again and rise to greater prominence with new outside investors at the helm (and we still like to bet on the last option), there is one conclusion that seems to me to be inescapable: if the... Read More...

"The boxes of the DTC are fine; the only thing that's wrong is their distribution." That's an authentic quote from a DTC Sightholder in Mumbai. As the raison d'?tre of the DTC (and its core product) is distribution, that statement is roughly comparable to, "General Motors is a great company; the only thing that's wrong is their cars." Read More...

This week we planned to disclose that “luxury brand Montblanc is using deceptive and unfair trade practices in the advertising of its Meisterstuck Solitaire Royal Black Diamond fountain pen featuring 4,654 black diamonds - a writing... Read More...

A question: Which draft law counts more than 20 pages, numbers 29 articles, and contains some 116 sub-clauses? Answer: The new proposed anti-money laundering (AML) regulations for diamond merchants in Belgium. Compared to this draft... Read More...

Few articles have evoked as many as reactions as our reflections on the impact of potential financial losses that might be inflicted by Sightholders-in-trouble on the banking system and on parties within the industry-at-large. Some of the writers felt that I refrained from mentioning the apparent failure of Supplier of Choice... Read More...

Ad agency copywriters are among the most creative writers on earth, and their ability to play on words is often mind-boggling. Those writers may, however, be less familiar with laws and ethics in the diamond industry. These thoughts occurred to me while reviewing the website of one of the world’s most prominent... Read More...

A few weeks ago our column started with, “Why the hell should we finance DTC Sight boxes, which we know to be overpriced and are causing losses to our clients?” fumed a diamond banker from his holiday resort somewhere on the Mediterranean coast. “That’s irrational behavior on our part. The time has come to put a stop to it. Read More...

The U.S. Governmental “watchdog”, the GAO, has submitted a 62-page report to the U.S. Congress on the functioning, or rather the lack thereof, of the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme (KPCS)... Read More...