What Setup the Latest Bankruptcy?

(edahngolan.com) - I’ll open with a confession: I don’t know where I’m going with this text. I usually start writing knowing what I want to say, and with a conclusion in mind. The conclusion is a destination. But not today. The thing is that it’s not just me – it’s the industry too. We don’t know where we are going, and that is the setup for a bankruptcy, a very disturbing thought. It has yet to be published, but a major diamond company is apparently going down. The size of its debts are unknown at this point, but the scale is understood – in the many tens of millions of dollars. The debts are said to be split about half and half between banks and the diamond industry. The company is considered a well-established one, not known as a risk taker or as a company that pays exuberantly for its rough, and to me this is the most disconcerting aspect. A company that at least appeared to act prudently has taken a major hit. Not a reckless company, not one that gambled big on odd ventures, not a company that relied heavily on supplying goods on memo to American specialty retailers. None of these to my knowledge. Nobody ever spoke negatively about them. Just a “regular” company.