Diamond News Archives

The Diamond Producers Association (DPA) announced today the third wave of the Real is Rare, Real is a Diamond campaign. Entitled ‘For Me, From Me’, the campaign is inspired by the natural diamond industry’s strongest growth engine, women self-purchase, which today represents one-third of all diamond jewelry sales in the US, a $43 billion diamond market that grew +4% in 2017, according to De Beers Group data.

The campaign videos will debut during E!’s highly rated Oscar coverage on February 24th. The activation will include innovative picture-in-picture units on-air before traditional commercial breaks as well as photo gallery takeovers on Instagram and EOnline.com. The full suite of videos can be viewed here.

“Previous Real is Rare, Real is a Diamond campaigns established diamonds as the ultimate symbol of realness and authenticity in love and in life,” said Kristina Buckley Kayel, Managing Director of North America for the DPA. “Our latest campaign celebrates the distinct pride and joy women feel in purchasing a diamond for themselves, a celebration of self that is beautifully embodied by the enduring qualities of a natural diamond. It’s timely for the diamond industry to acknowledge the different needs and mindset of the female self-purchaser and position itself to optimally service her.”

“DPA’s qualitative research conducted in 2018 helped uncover why women consider natural diamonds the ultimate self-luxury: they can be worn every day with any outfit, they last a lifetime and can be passed down, and they are a good investment because they retain their value,” noted Kayel.

One millennial woman in the focus groups stated, “I just feel more confident when I wear diamonds I bought...

At the current federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour, working 40 hours per week, 52 weeks per year, yields an annual income of only $15,080. This is below the annual poverty line. It also reflects something that most people are unaware of — in Illinois, there are more than 19,000 retired teachers who get OVER^[1] $100,000 per year in their pension. According to the latest data, nearly 1.5 in ten federal employees are eligible to retire RIGHT NOW, and in five years the number will hit three in 10 or about 30%. The Housing and Urban Development Department in the federal government has the highest rate of employees eligible to retire right now of any major agency in government, which stands at a shocking 24%.

Under U.S. law, there are two broad types of retirement plans: defined-benefit (DB) and defined-contribution (DC) plans. The Defined-benefit plan has been mostly abandoned in the private sector because they were rapidly revealing how they failed to work. The DB plan use to come with a gold watch and ensured you some level of benefit for the rest of your life. This was all part of how to prevent another Great Depression. Typically, your employer would invest part of your compensation in the plan based on some formula. In some cases, you, the worker, might have added more money to the pot. The employer was required to send your defined benefit each month or quarter to a fund. Typically, this was in the form of a fixed-dollar amount, sometimes with periodic cost-of-living adjustments. That scheme ran into trouble that set standards for private-sector pension plans and defined their tax benefits under federal law because government wanted a piece of the action due to income taxes.

Most state and local...

Wholesale prices for lab-grown diamonds have fallen by up to 60 percent since De Beers began selling synthetic stones for jewellery in September, CEO Bruce Cleaver said on Thursday, adding margins for the sector would continue to fall.

De Beers, part of mining group Anglo American, shocked the diamond industry last year when it announced it was reversing a decades-old policy of selling natural diamonds only for jewellery and synthetic stones for industrial uses.

Its Lightbox brand, created for the new synthetic venture, is starting small, selling 20,000 carats by the end of 2019, but De Beers has invested in a synthetic diamond factory in the U.S. state of Oregon, which should produce more than half a million rough carats a year when fully operational in 2020.

Already, the impact on synthetic pricing had been huge, Cleaver said, citing De Beers' analysis that showed an up to 60 percent fall in wholesale prices. He said the slide would continue as improved technology increases the quality and volume of lab-grown diamonds.

"The margins that were out there are not sustainable," Cleaver told Reuters in an interview. "I like to compare it to a flat screen TV. The first ones were very expensive and the quality was poor."

Cleaver however denied synthetic diamonds were cutting into the price of natural stones, which he says are a different product. "It's a perfectly legitimate business. It's just a different business," he says of lab-grown diamonds.

Much of the aim of De Beers, the world's leading diamond seller by value, in launching Lightbox is to differentiate diamonds grown in a laboratory from those found...

(Reuters) - Fitch Ratings said on Wednesday it may downgrade the United Kingdom’s ‘AA’ debt rating based on growing uncertainty about the negotiations between Britain and the European Union over the nation’s departure from the economic bloc next month.

“Fitch believes that a ‘no-deal’ Brexit would lead to substantial disruption to UK economic and trade prospects, at least in the near term,” the rating agency said in a statement.

Fitch also said it may lower its ‘AA’ rating on the Bank of England if it cuts the UK’s sovereign rating.

Earlier on Wednesday, British Prime Minister Theresa May held “constructive” talks in Brussels as she sought concessions on Brexit from a skeptical EU and her strategy came under strain after the defection of three lawmakers.

In late U.S. trading, sterling extended losses briefly against the dollar following Fitch’s statement on the UK’s rating. It ended down 0.1 percent at $1.3051.

Time is running out for May to gain approval from UK lawmakers ahead of the March 29 Brexit deadline.

“For the withdrawal agreement to be approved by the UK by the deadline, the government would need to substantially widen its support,” Fitch said.

UK’s economic growth will be affected by the Brexit outcome, Fitch said. Growth slowed to 0.2 percent in the fourth quarter in 2018 from 0.6 percent the quarter before. That left real growth at 1.4 percent for 2018, Fitch said.

If Britain leaves the EU with no deal on trade, border and other issues, it faces risks of...