Synthetic diamonds reshape the industry

The big diamond miners have become rattled by the growth of synthetic diamonds, at the same time as the price for natural stones is in decline.

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(Image credit: 2019 Max Mumby/Indigo)

In her first official engagement of the year Meghan Markle (pictured) wore diamond earrings that were "notable not for their sparkle but for their origin", says Henry Sanderson in the Financial Times. They were grown in a laboratory rather than mined from the earth. Mainly sold in the US, synthetic diamonds tap into a "growing backlash against... blood diamonds" to fund wars, says Rachel Millard in The Times.

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Marina Gerner is an award-winning journalist and columnist who has written for the Financial Times, the Times Literary Supplement, the Economist, The Guardian and Standpoint magazine in the UK; the New York Observer in the US; and die Bild and Frankfurter Rundschau in Germany.

Marina is also an adjunct professor at the NYU Stern School of Business at their London campus, and has a PhD from the London School of Economics.

Her first book, The Vagina Business, deals with the potential of “femtech” to transform women’s lives, and will be published by Icon Books in September 2024.

Marina is trilingual and lives in London.