De Beers Canada to move headquarters to Calgary from Toronto

Reuters
A man enters a branch of De Beers at the Royal Exchange shopping centre in the City of London August 16, 2010. REUTERS/Andrew Winning

TORONTO (Reuters) - De Beers Canada will close its Toronto headquarters and relocate to Calgary, Alberta, by the end of next June as part of a restructuring to more efficiently support its Canadian diamond mines, a spokesman said on Friday. De Beers, which has about 100 employees in Toronto and over 1,000 in Canada, operates the Victor mine in Timmins, Ontario, and the Snap Lake mine in Northwest Territories, where it is now building a third mine, Gahcho Kue. "One of the things that accelerated this is the current state of the diamond market," said De Beers Canada spokesman Tom Ormsby. Anglo American owns 85 percent of De Beers. The remaining 15 percent is owned by the government of the Republic of Botswana. Diamond producers have cut production and prices amid slack demand and a supply glut. The restructuring, which will also see some mine employees relocate to Calgary, is expected to reduce staff numbers, but Ormsby said there was no target or estimated savings. (Reporting by Susan Taylor)