Welcome to Diamond Finance

The diamond industry has long been supported by an underestimated group of people, who are

critical to the sector. They work in an environment of ever increasing complexity from

accounting standards, anti-money laundering and terrorism funding legislation and taxation changes.

Add to this the other tasks which fall on their desks, like standards compliance and human

resource administration.

These are the accounting and finance teams of the diamond companies. In a small company, the

CEO or one of the partners will be responsible for this function. In larger companies there will be a

whole team of such people. They all have the need to be informed and knowledgeable in their

areas of expertise, yet there is little out there in the way of specific publications and resources for

the diamond financial professional. This newsletter, which will be issued monthly,

shall address that need. Rappaport, Idex and others, do excellent work with their news services

and magazines, and Diamond Finance aims to complement them with financial and accounting

information specific to the industry.

In each issue, Diamond Finance will look at an accounting standard from an IFRS and US GAAP

perspective and how it relates to our sector. A tax jurisdiction will be introduced and a selection of

important bankers, starting with HSBC’s Jeff Pfeffer, accountants and other professionals active

in our industry will be interviewed. Diamond Finance shall review accounting and diamond

software and issue in-depth articles on banking insurance, AML/CFT, BPP and professional

named after the Greek philosopher who was excited by beauty, but with his unflinching views

will have positive recommendations on SoC and other issues.

Lastly, there will be a classified section where financial and accounting positions and other

opportunities in the industry will be posted.