Reports: Gareth Penny’s Consortium Is Top De Beers Bidder

By Karen Dybis | July 17, 2026

A Botswana government official said Anglo American has selected a consortium to buy De Beers, multiple outlets reported today, including Bloomberg, which said the winning bidder is the consortium led by former De Beers CEO Gareth Penny (pictured).

“Anglo American ran a competitive process involving three short-listed bidders, and has since identified a preferred bidder, the Global Diamond Consortium,” Reuters quoted Moeti Mohwasa, Botswana’s minister for state president, defense, and security, as saying. Global Diamond Consortium is led by Penny, two people “with knowledge of the matter” who asked not to be identified told Bloomberg.

Penny’s consortium, along with a group led by Israeli businessman Nir Livnat, had been considered the front-runners to purchase De Beers. Anglo American, which owns 85% of De Beers, announced it would sell the diamond giant in May 2024 and had more recently set April 16, 2026, as the formal deadline for bids.

According to today’s Reuters story, Mohwasa said the sale is likely to be done by year’s end. Botswana, which holds a 15% stake in De Beers, was “weighing whether to exercise its right of first refusal” on the selected bidder, said Reuters.

Bloomberg had reported earlier this week that Angola was still in talks with Anglo American about acquiring a share of De Beers, and wanted a stake that allowed it to help shape the company’s strategy.

Penny—who joined the De Beers board in 2003 and served as group CEO from 2006 to 2010—has mostly been notably mum on his consortium’s bid for De Beers, but he did give an interview to podcast Enter the Boardroom in June.

Here are some things Penny said in that wide-ranging conversation about Anglo American, his De Beers career, and his thoughts on the diamond industry.

He’s the consensus builder and a keen listener. Penny indicated in his comments that he wants to hear a diversity of opinions in meetings, even at the highest level. “The chair should be the last to speak. The problem is if the chair expresses an opinion too early, then if anybody expresses a contrary option, then they feel like they’re doing up against the chair,” Penny told host Oliver Cummings.

He’s open to outside, educated ideas. Penny worked management consulting firm Bain to gain outside input on De Beers. He also sought out unique conversations to open his mind. “You need diversity around the board table. You need your experts, but you also need people who’ve been and done other things and have an ability to look outside the box and just say, ‘When we were here, we did this’ or ‘let’s look at that example.’ So, you need that open mindedness around the board table.”

He respects tradition as well as younger points of view. “There are a lot of De Beers’ clients who are family-run businesses. So, we had extensive meetings with our top customers who said, ‘Please bring in people who are a younger generation.’ … And it was fascinating how often they would come up with insights that you just hadn’t really thought about.”

He’s singularly focused on shareholder value—all shareholders. When Penny was working at De Beers, Anglo owned 45%, the Oppenheimer family owned 40%, and Botswana held 15%. One group could not dominate the others, Penny said. “You’ve always got to go back to saying, ‘What is in the best interest of a company?’ And you’ve got to remind the different shareholders that we have one overarching responsibility, and that is to do what is in the interest of all shareholder. You cannot pander to what is a particular need of one of them.”

(JCK file photo)