The R&M “Lettre”

Press Release: Diamond dealers and retailers now have lower-cost options to confirm the nature of their diamond inventory.

Global Witness called for urgent action to prevent a businessman in China from financing Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe’s military regime.  According to the group’s report published today, ”Financing a Parallel Government?,” Global Witness revealed that Zimbabwe’s Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) received financing from a Hong Kong-based businessman at the same time that the CIO is […]

A customs report has alerted the government that conflict diamonds are finding their way into India for processing, and then exported to the U.S. and European markets. More than 48,000 carats of conflict diamonds were seized in Surat and Mumbai in the past year.

Even though Zimbabwe’s cabinet agreed last week to ensure that diamond revenue is remitted to the treasury, smuggling, looting and leaks in the pipeline will remain serious problems unless urgent measures are taken to curb them. When Zimbabwe held mass diamond sales in India in November 2011, bargain hunters from as far as Israel, Lebanon and China […]

Two major trends are currently engulfing the diamond market – branding and ethical ‎consumerism. Savvy diamond firms across the pipeline would do well to enmesh the ‎two. Ultimately, a company’s corporate social responsibility (CSR) strategy, which ‎defines its ethical practice, should enhance and not diminish its brand.

This may not be a good time to consider marketing – considering the tough state of diamond jewelry. At the same time, it is precisely because of times like this that generic marketing is so missed.  The times really are tough. Miners are mining less, manufacturers are suffering from the high rough prices and low polished […]

The rough diamond sector is in trouble. Not only the low demand, high costs, increasing inventories, weak polished prices or low liquidity testifies to this. People are also pessimistic. So much so, that they apologize for their gloomy descriptions.

A sizeable debate has been brought up to date: and what about synthetic diamonds? Will they one day be able to substitute for natural diamonds and compensate for a supply about to run dry 20 years from now? Freeze-frame.

There’s a dark horse lurking in the shadows of the diamond industry in the form of the ‎Botswana government. Not only is it about to become a major rough diamond supplier in ‎its own right – that is, independent of the Diamond Trading Company (DTC) – but it may ‎soon gain more of a say […]

The Kimberley Process outlived its purpose. It can no longer evolve, it cannot adjust to current problems and the old ones are mostly gone. The problems that the KP was created to address can be taken care of with much simpler tools. Therefore, let us give KP the honorable and dignified euthanasia it deserves, cherish […]

The Diamond Trading Company’s (DTC) June sight had an estimated value of $540 ‎million. The De Beers rough distribution company made slight adjustments to prices and ‎assortments that enabled the boxes to maintain their value. DTC reduced prices on some ‎boxes and increased prices on others.‎

Taking up the post of president was not an obvious one for the recently elect president of the Diamond Dealers Club of New York (DDC), Reuven Kaufman. Heavy debt, shrinking membership and a general feeling of futility ruled the DDC, but Kaufman, one of the Club’s board members, felt that change was possible.