Nobody has De Beers yet, and there will be no listing
Anglo American's chief executive says the sale is in its final and hardest phase, that no bidder holds exclusivity, and that a public listing is off the table. Completion is targeted for the second half.
By The Diamonds Desk
What changed
Anglo American has corrected the story the trade had settled on. Duncan Wanblad, the group's chief executive, said the De Beers sale is now in the final phases of a process that is also the hardest one, because it requires several parties to move at the same time.
What it means
- The exclusivity denial is the part to trade on, not the timetable. Anglo has every reason to say an auction is still competitive, and a seller talking up a field of bidders is the oldest position in the book, so the claim deserves scepticism.
- But it is now on the record from the chief executive, and it means the July reports of a chosen consortium were premature rather than merely early. The practical consequence is that the price is not set, which is why nobody should plan a 2027 supply contract against a number they read in a newspaper.
- Until a signed agreement is announced, De Beers has a queue, not an owner.
Key figures
| completion targeted | H2 2026 |
|---|---|
| approvals after signing | ~1 year |
| exclusive bidders | 0 |
| H1 revenue, −19% | $1.6B |
Source: the De Beers sale
A stage, and a sequence
He put completion in the second half of this year, and regulatory approval roughly a year after signature.
That is the first time Anglo has attached both a stage and a sequence to a disposal it announced in May 2024, and the timetable it implies runs well into 2027 before anyone new actually controls the company.
The more consequential sentence was about exclusivity. Wanblad said Anglo is not exclusive with any consortium and continues to hold multiple active bidders, which contradicts the reporting that the group assembled by Gareth Penny, De Beers' former chief executive, had been selected.
This desk carried that framing on July 26 under the headline that Anglo had picked the Penny group and started a year-end clock. The clock was right. The pick was not, and the correction matters commercially, because a named front-runner and a live auction produce very different prices for the same asset.
De Beers underlying EBITDA loss, first half
Source: the De Beers sale
The pick was not right
A listing is now formally excluded. Wanblad said Anglo does not believe the market has the capacity to absorb a De Beers flotation at this point, which removes the exit route that would have given the trade a public share price and a quarterly disclosure obligation.
What replaces it is a private sale to a buyer under no duty to publish anything. For sightholders deciding how much rough to fund through the winter, the difference is not abstract. A listed De Beers reports its rough index every quarter. A privately held one need not.
| Figure | |
|---|---|
| H1 2025 | −$189M |
| H1 2026 | −$113M |
Loss narrowed on cost cuts rather than recovered demand. Anglo American. Carat Capital graphics desk.
No listing, no disclosure
The financials the buyers are pricing were published on July 31.
De Beers turned over $1.6 billion in the first half, down 19% year on year, and carried an underlying loss before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation of $113 million, narrowed from $189 million in the first half of 2025 on cost cuts rather than on recovered demand.
Against that, the figure reported in late July was a sale near $1 billion with about $750 million payable up front, for a business Anglo carried at $4.9 billion as recently as 2023. Wanblad's word for this stage was blunt: "That also is the most challenging phase."
The story so far
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Method
Loss narrowed on cost cuts rather than recovered demand. Anglo American.