De Beers will shine on its own: Diamond boss confident in £4bn Anglo spin-off

The De Beers boss has insisted the company will prosper if it is separated from current owner Anglo American – with a possible listing on the London stock market on the horizon.

Al Cook pointed out that the company had done “some of our best work” in the 124 years before Anglo took control 12 years ago.

But with Anglo looking to offload the world’s most prestigious diamond miner, there is speculation that the company could list on the London Stock Exchange for £4 billion or be sold to a buyer such as a sovereign wealth fund.

De Beers is famous for its advertisements proclaiming ‘A Diamond is Forever’ in 1947, which reshaped the entire engagement ring market.

But it has suffered a decline in sales and prices, especially as the popularity of much cheaper lab-grown stones has risen.

Anglo’s boss Duncan Wanblad said last month that De Beers was one of four companies it would sell or spin off under a hasty strategy that helped fend off a £39 billion takeover by rival BHP.

Cook, who has been CEO of De Beers since February 2023, said it was “consciously decoupling” from Anglo, in a nod to the term used by Gwyneth Paltrow and Coldplay frontman Chris Martin when they parted on good terms.

Cook, 49, has now unveiled his own roadmap for De Beers.

He wants to transform the 136-year-old group into a leading luxury jeweler, more than doubling the number of its own boutiques from 40 to 100 by the end of the decade.

Although it will continue mining, the goal is to become a rival to high-end houses such as Cartier and Tiffany.

“Mining will always be necessary and important, and we think we are very good at it,” Cook told the Mail.

“But it has to be so much more than that if we want to be successful in the future.”

Crucially, he wants to make the public fall in love with ‘natural’ diamonds again. He hopes that a customer can pick up a piece of jewelry in one of his stores and see which De Beers mine it came from.

Sparking: Actress Lily James during a De Beers promotion in London

This is what has defined the name of its ‘Origins’ strategy – although it remains to be seen whether it will come up with a new tagline to rival the blockbuster ‘A Diamond is Forever’.

In this vein, the group will also stop producing lab-grown diamonds for jewelry after a controversial six-year experiment, although it will continue to make them for industrial purposes, such as next-generation 6G microchips.

Cook is essentially betting that people will be willing to pay big bucks for luxury brand items, even if cheaper alternatives are available. Cook was an unlikely candidate to lead De Beers, having spent his career at BP, where he was latterly chief of staff to ex-boss Bob Dudley, and Equinor.

He struck up a conversation with Wanblad’s predecessor Mark Cutifani almost by chance during a Skype call for a charity board meeting during the pandemic — but there were technical difficulties.

“The only two people who were able to have a Skype call from all these charities were me and Mark,” he says. “So we start talking.” After Cutifani impressed him with what De Beers was doing to distribute vaccines in Botswana, Cook suggested a “socially distanced coffee.”

‘At the end of the conversation I said, ‘You know, if there was ever an opening in De Beers, and if you ever considered someone who didn’t know anything about diamonds, I would be interested.’

De Beers was founded in 1888 by Cecil Rhodes and was partly owned by the Oppenheimer family for 80 years. The company has had business ties with Anglo for most of its history, but it was only in 2012 that Anglo bought its majority 85 percent stake.

The remaining 15 percent is owned by the government of Botswana, where it has mines and regularly sells diamonds.

The advantage of owning a conglomerate like Anglo, which has a range of metals businesses, is that there is a built-in safety net.

If one commodity has fallen in value, the other has likely risen, offsetting these fluctuations.

With this in mind, can De Beers really go it alone? “The short answer is, ‘Yes,’” Cook says.

“For 124 years we didn’t have Anglo American as a majority shareholder. I think some of our best work was done when we were alone.

So I have confidence in that. The Oppenheimers and my predecessors have done wonderful things as an independent company and I think we can do that again.’

Anglo’s greatest legacy, he says, will be the technical mining know-how it passed on to De Beers. And he insists the split is amicable, even if it will take time.

“Like any couple who decides to consciously uncouple, we certainly start with the best intentions,” says Cook.

“And we’ve been dating in one form for a hundred years. We’re going to do that in a very nice way, I think, and at the end of next year we’ll go our separate ways.’