The first ever Diamond Town Hall Meeting with Gareth Penny and Varda Shine of De Beers will take place in Antwerp on June 3, at 4 pm, at the Diamantbeurs. At the joint initiative of the Antwerp World Diamond Center, its President Jacky Roth and industry journalist and analyst Chaim Even-Zohar, the industry will inaugurate its very own Diamond Town Hall Meeting.
A “Town Hall” meeting is an informal public meeting derived from the traditional town meetings where community leaders debate with their constituencies. Such meetings are widely held on occasions where the flow of ideas and information are of crucial importance. Generally such meetings are open to all stakeholders, which is also the idea behind the Diamond Town Hall Meeting with Gareth Penny and Varda Shine. Everybody in the Antwerp diamond community is invited to attend, voice their opinions, and hear the responses from two senior De Beers executives.
The Antwerp Diamond Town Hall meeting will enable stakeholders to understand how De Beers envisions the industry managing through and emerging from the economic crisis and the opportunities that will result in future. Following a short presentation, the industry leaders will take questions from the audience for a full 1.5 hours. No relevant subjects are off limit, whether it involves diamond mining, marketing, beneficiation, consumer demand, diamond financing, or anything that may be appropriate and is of interest to the community at large.
The Diamond Town Hall meeting will endeavor to be a two-way street. It will provide the stakeholders a chance to ask questions and provide feedback and insight to the major diamond producers.
The AWDC especially invites the directors and leaders of all the diamond bourses and trade and industry associations, senior executives of all the diamond financing institutions, trade journalists, local and national political leaders, industry leaders, rough dealers, diamond manufacturers, exporters and other members of the industry at large.
