Abstract

While a diamond might be forever, the diamond cartel clearly is not. The diamond industry, which for many years was dominated by the South African De Beers cartel, has undergone tremendous change over the last two decades and now faces an uncertain future. A host of exogenous and endogenous factors continue to compel De Beers, and the diamond cartel it helped forge, to make substantive changes to the business model under which it operates. Driven in large measure by the emergence of new, vertically integrated industry players, changing sets of priorities for mineral-rich countries, sociopolitical issues related to the diamond trade and the emergence of natural diamond substitutes, the diamond cartel as it has existed for the better part of the last century is becoming a historical relic. What lies ahead for De Beers will be determined in large part by a number of external factors currently affecting the diamond industry along with internal changes in De Beers's own strategy.

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Citation

Dharmadhikari, Kartik. "From Cartel to Competition: The Evolution of the Global Diamond Industry." The Chazen Web Journal of International Business (2008). http://www.gsb.columbia.edu/chazen/journal.

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