De Beers profits fall 92%

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/89c46692-782e-11de-bb06-00144feabdc0.html?nclick_check=1

by stuffthatmatter • 17 years ago

37 25 17 years ago

ft.com

growt• 17 years ago

I first read that as 'Beer profits fall 92%' and was slightly worried.

(I know you're picky about houmorous comments here, but please don't vote me down to -8)

rewind• 17 years ago

I wouldn't be surprised if beer sales increase in a recession as people stay home and drink more beer yet at a lesser overall cost than if they went out and drank half as much in a restaurant or bar.

mahmud• 17 years ago

Not just buying them. I know of two different IT people (in two continents no less) who finally have the time to build their own little basement brewery :-)

There is something about programmers and DIY foods and beverages. A good friend of mine also became an "urban farmer".

jbarciauskas• 17 years ago

Can't feel too badly for these guys, they've been capitalizing on market inefficiency (the bad kind, anti-competitive actions) for decades. For anyone interested in the diamond industry, this Wired story from 2003 provides some great insight into the cartel: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.09/diamond.html

absconditus• 17 years ago

This article is also very good:

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/198202/diamond

lincolnq• 17 years ago

Wow, and written in 1982. Thanks for that.

davidmathers2• 17 years ago

Ever since I read that article, maybe 10 years ago, I've been wondering "If that's all true then why is it taking so long?"

Elepsis• 17 years ago

The author of that article actually wrote essentially a book on the matter, which is available online for free: http://www.edwardjayepstein.com/diamond/prologue.htm

alanthonyc• 17 years ago

...registration required to read...

andrewbadera• 17 years ago

nah, just change false.html to true.html and chop off the redirect, like this:

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/89c46692-782e-11de-bb06-00144feabd...

dawie2• 17 years ago

One of the worst registration process I have had to go through. And you wonder why Newspapers are so f!@#^&ed. Their article is not even well written!

Clever little hack to get by the registration!

rwolf• 17 years ago

The problem with registration news sites--they don't own the underlying news.

A nag-free copy of the same information: http://www.livemint.com/2009/07/24122026/De-Beers-H1-net-pro...

dawie2• 17 years ago

Bottom line: De Beers spent lots of money on 2 mines in Canada and now has $1.5bn in debt, while demand for diamonds are at an all time low.

gruseom• 17 years ago

This reminds me of a joke I heard a (scarily) long time ago: "You bring De Beers, let's have apartheid."

Apart from their unparalleled success in protecting an artificially scarce market for so many years, did you know that De Beers were the early geniuses in product placement? Diamonds didn't use to be such a big deal. The romantic association of diamonds with love and commitment (primarily for women) was a marketing invention of De Beers. One way they did it was by paying to insert scenes involving diamonds into Hollywood movies (in the 1940s, IIRC), such as the heroine's friends telling her: "He gave you a ring without a diamond? The cad!" Diamonds started popping up in climactic scenes of reconciliation and inevitable marriage proposals.

I can't remember how I know this... it might have been in an old episode of This American Life. The other thing that surprised me was that they were a British company, not a South African one.

yalurker• 17 years ago

I have to say, anything bad happening to De Beers is music to my ears. As you've mentioned they run a cartel to sell worthless rocks at huge markups to irrational consumers, but my real problem comes from the toll their actions take on human lives in third world countries. The human rights violations of the diamond industry are unparalleled.

I'd recommend everyone read up on "blood diamonds" or "conflict diamonds" as well as the diamond market in general before ever purchasing a diamond for jewelry.

die_sekte• 17 years ago

Hey! Diamonds aren't worthless! One can make knives/scalpels/drills/… out of them!

davidmathers2• 17 years ago

I'd recommend everyone read up on "blood diamonds" or "conflict diamonds" as well as the diamond market in general before ever purchasing a diamond for jewelry.

I'm guessing most hackers aren't diamond buyers. I recommend everyone read this before buying any computers or electronic gadgets: http://www.johannhari.com/archive/article.php?id=863

chaostheory• 17 years ago

submarine PR/marketing at its best

theblackbox• 17 years ago

Another simply awful British company on the back foot at the moment over human rights violations due to the mining of a precious mineral is Vedanta. They bought a mountain and planned to demolish it in the search for Bauxite, despite the fact it is the ancestral home and most sacred place for the Dongria Kondh tribe. Luckily Survival International have been on the case from the start and this Monday a rep from the DK will be arriving in London to protest at Vedanta's AGM.

http://www.survival-international.org/news/4783

check them out - probably my favourite charity of all time

helveticaman• 17 years ago

Creative destruction at its finest.

jrockway• 17 years ago

Wow, selling rocks with no actual value is no longer profitable? Who would have thunk it! (This is like the Web 1.0 version of those "things" you can buy your friends on Facebook. No actual value, they're just a row in the database, but marketing and artificial scarcity makes people want to buy them. It doesn't last, though, once people realize that your worthless shit is worthless.)

De Beers profits fall 92%

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