Who will buy De Beers?

De Beers, the company founded by Cecil Rhodes which once controlled over 80 per cent of the world’s rough diamond supply, may soon go up for sale. Finding a buyer will be tricky. Since the pandemic, prices for mined diamonds have fallen by 26 per cent as indistinguishable lab-grown varieties have surged in popularity. Anglo American, De Beers’ parent company, is the target of a $39 billion hostile takeover bid by rival miner BHP. If BHP’s merger plans succeed – an outcome highly dependent on the blessing of South Africa’s government – it will seek to offload De Beers, ideally to a luxury house like LVMH or a buyer from the Gulf. But experts fear oversupply and a crash in the market: research by the antique diamond trader Hatton Jewels found some retailers of lab-grown stones are inflating profits by 1,200 per cent. It’s no surprise valuations for De Beers are all over the place. Anglo says it’s worth $7.6 billion; analysts’ estimates range from $600 million to $4 billion.