De Beers

De Beers is a family of companies that dominate the diamond, diamond mining, 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 N M Rothschild & Sons.[2] In 1927, Ernest Oppenheimer, a German Jewish immigrant who had earlier founded mining giant Anglo American PLC with American financier J.P. Morgan,[3] managed to wrest control of the empire, building and consolidating the company's global monopoly over the world's 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.