FROM CRISIS TO CHAIRMANSHIP OF DE BEERS 203
situation was arising. The issues involved were partly technical and partly personal.
The
technical issues can be summarily stated, (i) Given that it was
desirable for the producers to be associated with the sale of diamonds,
should there be a new buying and selling company, or, as Ernest
Oppenheimer sometimes expressed it later, an 'enlarged' Syndicate?
(2)
If properties were to be acquired, were they to be acquired by De Beers
or by the new buying and selling company, or were properties acquired
to be taken over in part by the one and in part by the other?
(3)
If there was to be a new company what was to be its capitalization?
Should it be representative of the Diamond Syndicate and all the four
'conference' producers, i.e. De Beers, Jagersfontein, Premier and
Consolidated Diamond Mines of South West Africa, or only of the
Syndicate and De Beers? Should the board be equally divided between
Syndicate members and representatives of the producers or should one
side or the other have a majority? Lastly, (4) if there was to be a new
buying and selling company, what should be the future relations between
it and the Syndicate firms, or, to put it another way, what was to be
the role of the old Syndicate firms? Were they to continue to sell the
diamonds produced by the 'old' producers (i.e. the product of the De
Beers mines, Jagersfontein, Komefontein, Consolidated and Premier) or
were they to merge their business with that of the proposed buying and
selling company so as to cover the entire range of output of Southern
Africa?
On
the personal side, the issue was in reality very simple. Should Ernest
Oppenheimer become chairman of De Beers and of the new company,
assuming it came into existence, or of one of the companies only? And
if so, which? Or should he become chairman of neither? This latter
possibility, it may be pointed out, had no chance of being realized:
obviously, Ernest Oppenheimer would simply have refused to deal on any
such terms.
The
negotiations, which finally resulted in the formation of the Diamond
Corporation, went on from September 1928 until January 1930, and at one
moment, at the end of 1928, threatened to come to an end altogether.
In
these negotiations the dominant figures were Ernest Oppenheimer
himself, Solly Joel, Viallate as representative of the French
shareholders, and Lord Bessborough as representative of the London
directors. From the beginning, Viallate was opposed to De Beers taking
an interest in the purchase and disposal of the State alluvial diamonds.
