This is O/T for AFA but good reading for diamond business.

Entitled: THE THREE INDUSTRY WILD CARDS, 20 June 2008 by Chaim Even-Zohar

Here's link: http://www.diamondintelligence.com/m...

An exerpt is below. But what I find very strange is that I observe that it is WOMEN that are the most owners (wearers) of diamonds but I can't see one women on the list “by invitation only” to Vybornov’s St. Petersburg conclave. BTW Vybornov is Alrosa’s president Sergei Vybornov.

Here's a cut/paste from article with list:

We now are getting the “by invitation only” to Vybornov’s St. Petersburg conclave, illustrating that he is putting his money where his mouth is. On June 29, a dozen of the industry’s major players will sit around a table in a closed room. The list of invitees includes not only major miners such as Gareth Penny (De Beers), Varda Shine (DTC), Bill Champion (Rio Tinto), Graham Kerr (BHP Billiton), Bob Gannicott (Harry Winston Diamond Corporation) and Manuel Ganga (Catoca), but also the producers’ main downstream partners. Thus we see names such as Dilip Mehta (Rosy Blue), Chaim Pluczenik (Pluczenik), Kaushik Mehta (Eurostar), Isaac Tache (Tache), Lev Leviev (LLD), Nir Livnat (Steinnmetz Group) and Maurice Tempelsman (Lazare Kaplan).

The intriguing additional participants represent the jewelry world: Francesco Trapani (Bulgari), Michael Kowalski (Tiffany), Bernard Arnault (LVMH), Mark Light (Sterling), Laurence Graff (Graff) and Johan Rupert (Richemont). And there are still more invitees such as Victor van der Kwast and Kurt Looyens (ABN-AMRO International Diamond and Jewelry Division), Paul Goris (Antwerp Diamond Bank) and Patrick Kwok (Chow Tai Fook). That the World Diamond Council (WDC) is supposed to meet in Antwerp at the same time is apparently as relevant as the relevancy of the WDC itself. Actually, trade and industry bodies (WFDB, IDMA, CRJP, CIBJO, etc.) and the occasional NGO, which generally dominate industry events, are specifically and deliberately not invited by Vybornov.