'Diamond of a lifetime' could fetch Canadian company more than $90M

CTV News Channel: Mega diamond up for auction The largest diamond found in the last 100 years is up for auction. William Lamb from Lucara Diamond Corp. has more on the great find.

The largest rough diamond in existence is going up for auction this evening, and could net the Canadian mining company that discovered it more than C$90 million.

The Lesedi la Rona diamond -- as the rock has been dubbed -- was unearthed last November in a Botswana mine owned by Vancouver-based Lucara Diamond Corp.

The gemstone measures 1,109 carats, making it the second-largest rough diamond ever discovered.

It’s considered the find of a lifetime. But Lucara Diamond CEO William Lamb says he actually felt nothing when he heard about the discovery.

“Every CEO of a diamond company has the wish that they’re going to get a call of a historic find. When it actually happens, you’re just dumbfounded. There’s no words to actually explain the emotion that goes through you,” Lamb told CTV News Channel Wednesday.

“Oddly enough, I’m hoping to experience the exact same emotion when it is sold this evening,” he said of the planned Sotheby’s auction in London.

While the diamond discovery is exciting for the gemmological world and for whoever might take the gemstone home, it’s also a big deal for Lucara Diamond Corp. shareholders.

In the days before the diamond was discovered, Lucara’s stock price was sitting at $1.60 a share. The day after the discovery announcement, the share price jumped to $2.50.

As of Wednesday morning, the company’s stock is valued at around $3.90, meaning Lucara Diamond investors who bought in before the big find have more than doubled their money.

“So it’s been a great success for the company and its shareholders,” Lamb said.

The Johannesburg-born Lamb believes his company helped drive excitement for the Lesedi la Rona diamond – and his company – by displaying the baseball-sized gem in Singapore, Hong Kong and Dubai, and New York.

“It’s difficult for people to visualize just what a 1,000-carat stone looks like. When they see it, they suddenly start to add up (its worth),” Lamb said.

Lucara Diamond discovered the gem at its Karowe Mine facility in Botswana. The mine was fully commissioned in 2012 and Lamb says they started recovering large stones almost right away.

“We knew the resource we were mining had potential to produce something of significance,” Lamb said.

The company installed state-of the-art technology in the mine in 2015, which Lamb credits with making the Lesedi la Rona find just a few months later.

“I think it’s important to understand this stone was not recovered by what most people imagine based on movies they’ve seen, which is somebody standing in muddy water,” he said.

“It was actually discovered by some of the latest technology to be employed by the diamond mining industry.”

The current record price for a diamond is US$48.5 million, which a Hong Kong billionaire paid to buy a 12-carat polished diamond for his 7-year-old daughter last year.

This diamond could go for twice that, bringing many happy smiles to the Canadian company’s executives and shareholders

With files from The Canadian Press