The R&M “Lettre”

This is not the column I’d prepared for today. That one was written, proofed, readied, and even had a visual prepared to illustrate a point – and then I abandoned it.

Demand for rough diamonds is increasing. Rough traders are competing for goods, which has driven up prices of DTC goods over the past few days.

Harry Winston Diamond Corp’s sale of its luxury brand to Swatch Group is the most ‎significant step yet taken by this rapidly evolving company. Essentially, the deal marks ‎the end of Harry Winston the mining company, as the brand returns to its luxury roots, ‎and the mining business is renamed Dominion Diamond Corporation.  ‎

Rough diamond prices increased by more than 20 percent each year since the post crisis era as producers struggled to keep pace with demand.

Harry Winston Diamond Corp. (HW)’s $1 billion sale of a luxury unit to Swatch Group AG (UHR) provides the cash to invest more in diamond mining, a business that last year was more than twice as profitable as jewelry, Liezel Hill and Christopher Donville write in an article posted by Bloomberg News at www.businessweek.com on […]

The long and winding road from wrestling with deep losses and large debts to the highlights of profits, major acquisitions and large returns on a divestment, was as precarious as the ice road leading to Canada’s diamond mines.

“… the game of Snakes and Ladders captures, as no other activity can hope to do, the ‎eternal truth that for every ladder you hope to climb, a snake is waiting just around the ‎corner, and for every snake a ladder will compensate,” Salmon Rushdie, Midnight’s ‎Children.‎

Weakness crept into the diamond market in August 2011. In the year that followed, 2012 proved to be one filled with notable changes and challenges, some of which will continue to have an impact in 2013.

The moment when a leading company decides to float on the stock market is always a moment of uncertainty. All eyes are pointed to its early results, as analysts try to figure out to correctly measure its performance.

Mike Roman, th e late former chairman of Jewelers of America (JA), once told Martin ‎Rapaport, “Don’t worry about diamonds. The industry will be okay, as long as there are ‎three things: Christmas, sex, and guilt.” The good news is that each year he has proven correct, and his premise holds true for ‎‎2013, if […]

Perhaps 2012 was not as much of a rollercoaster year as it was a year of evolution and change. Rough prices declined, the Oppenheimer’s cashed out, BHP Billiton found a buyer (but Rio Tinto didn’t), production was curtailed, and calls for marketing support went largely ignored by miners. An examination of the DTC price list […]

Bain & Company said that the surprisingly strong diamond demand growth posted in 2011 and uncertainty around fourth-quarter holiday sales in 2012 introduced significant variables into the demand outlook for the year. China and India accounted for most of the diamond demand growth last year.