Angola wants De Beers stake to shape strategy, minister says

Angola remains in talks about a potential investment in De Beers and wants a stake large enough to help shape the company’s strategy, Petroleum and Mineral Resources Minister Diamantino Azevedo said.

The government is seeking a shareholding that would allow it “to sit at the table,” help shape the company’s strategy and participate in executive-level discussions, rather than a controlling stake, Azevedo said Wednesday at a Doing Business Angola conference in Lisbon.

“We’re in a negotiation process,” he said. “De Beers isn’t just a mining company. It’s technology, distribution, networks, consumers and geopolitics.”

Anglo American Plc is in the final stages of selling De Beers after years of weak performance at the world’s largest diamond producer. A group of investors led by former chief executive officer Gareth Penny is leading the race to buy the company, after the US-Israeli war on Iran disrupted rival bids, Bloomberg reported last month. Backed by some of the world’s biggest gem traders, the group plans to refocus De Beers on natural stones.

De Beers is 15%-owned by Botswana, which has also expressed an interest in increasing its stake in the company.

Angola, one of the world’s top diamond producers and home to some of the largest reserves of the mineral, wants to help safeguard both De Beers and the broader industry, Azevedo said.

Asked about the impact of synthetic diamonds, Azevedo said the industry should adapt to the rise of lab-grown gems rather than try to eliminate them.

“We have to learn to live with synthetics. They’re here and we’re not going to remove them,” he said. “What we ask is that when a consumer buys a diamond or a synthetic stone, they know exactly what they’re buying.”

(By Henrique Almeida)