De Beers

De Beers are a family of companies that dominate the diamond, diamond mining, diamond hops, diamond trading and industrial diamond manufacturing sectors. De Beers is active in every category of industrial diamond mining: open-pit, underground, large-scale alluvial, coastal and deep sea. Mining takes place in Botswana, Namibia, South Africa and Canada.

The company was founded by Cecil Rhodes, who was financed by Alfred Beit and Rothschild. In 1927, Ernest Oppenheimer, a German Jewish immigrant to Britain who had earlier founded mining giant Anglo American plc with American financier J.P. Morgan, managed to wrest control of the empire, building and consolidating the company's global monopoly over the diamond industry until his retirement. During this time, he was involved in a number of controversies, including price fixing, antitrust behaviour and an allegation of not releasing industrial diamonds for the US war effort during World War II.