CaratOne billion for De Beers, and $750 million of it up front
Bloomberg puts the Gareth Penny consortium's price at about $1 billion: roughly $750 million on closing and $250 million later, with some $500 million of working capital going in behind it. Book value earlier this year was $2.3 billion.
§1A number, at last.
Anglo American's exit from diamonds now has a number attached, and it is a small one. Bloomberg reported on Wednesday that the Global Diamond Consortium, the group led by former De Beers chief executive Gareth Penny, would pay about $1 billion for Anglo's 85% stake: roughly $750 million on closing and a further $250 million deferred. The consortium would then put around $500 million of working capital into the business it had just bought. Terms are not final, and neither side has confirmed them on the record.
Set that against the ledger. De Beers carried a book value of about $2.3 billion earlier this year, after Anglo took $3.5 billion of write-downs against the asset. When the business was taken private in 2001 it was valued at $17.6 billion. A price of $1 billion is therefore not a discount to a peak so much as an admission that the peak belonged to a different industry.
§2Producing into the trough.
The June quarter explains where the bid sits. De Beers dug 88% more rough than a year earlier, 7.8 million carats, and banked 44% less for it: revenue of $665 million at an average price of $105 a carat, down 32%. Producing into the weakest market in a generation is what a miner does when its mine plans were set years ago and its buyers were not. A purchaser is pricing that inventory, not the marketing.
A price of $1 billion is therefore not a discount to a peak so much as an admission that the peak belonged to a different industry.
§3Three governments at one table.
The politics are the harder part of the arithmetic. Botswana owns the other 15% and has told its parliament that the stake carries complete freedom: join the consortium, exercise pre-emption alone, or bid alongside a third party. Namibia and Angola already sit inside the Penny group, so three producer governments would end up on the same side of the table as the traders who buy from them. Anglo still expects to close by the end of 2026.
A billion dollars is the trade's own valuation of the story it has been telling itself since 2022. What the buyer gets is the Forevermark shelf space, the Botswana relationship, the Element Six industrials arm, and a rough book that now has to be sold into the market rather than above it.
The number that matters is not the $1 billion but the $500 million going in behind it, because the price of the asset is now smaller than the cost of carrying it through another soft year.
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De Beers digs 88% more and banks 44% less.