Summary
A private company in which the state of Israel participated and which was entirely under state control, which from 1950 was to handle the diamond arrangements perfected by Jacob van Amerongen; its owners and stockholders were the two diamond controllers, Albert Ehrenfeld and Van Amerongen, joined by Jack Brin and Yosef Pick (Diamonds and War — State, Capital, and Labor in British-Ruled Palestine, PDF p.265).
Details
- The company’s name literally means “development company”; Jack Brin was the general manager of the Ministry of Trade and Industry, and Yosef Pick was in charge of export and trade agreements in Israel’s Ministry of Finance in 1949-1950 (Diamonds and War — State, Capital, and Labor in British-Ruled Palestine, PDF p.265).
- The arrangements it handled grew out of the state’s 1949 assistance to the diamond industry — buying the manufacturers’ unsold diamonds, increased export premiums, sales of rough and unpolished reserves abroad, and currency switching — made crucial by the drastic narrowing of syndicate supplies to the Israeli industry (Diamonds and War — State, Capital, and Labor in British-Ruled Palestine, PDF p.265).
- During the 1950s the company was instrumental in finding new sources of rough diamonds in Africa and Central America for the industry, in making the industry more competitive, and in mobilizing the diamond industry nationally, establishing factories in Israel’s new development towns (Diamonds and War — State, Capital, and Labor in British-Ruled Palestine, PDF p.265).