De Beers’s diamond buyers took the rare opportunity to reject stones from the biggest supplier as the company offered almost unprecedented flexibility to ease a growing crisis.
De Beers sold just $280 million of diamonds this month, 44% less than a year earlier. The only sale smaller in the last three years was in July, when many customers refused to buy amid concerns they couldn’t make money on the rough diamonds. The Anglo American Plc unit’s sales so far this year are down $1 billion from the same time in 2018.
