Smash & grab raid at London's Royal Exchange

The weekend saw yet another high profile jewel heist in London, this time at the Royal Exchange in the City of London (pictured below).

At about 10pm on Saturday night a red BMW drew up outside a back entrance of the Royal Exchange.

Robbers then managed to get past the building’s wrought iron gates before reportedly using sledgehammers to smash their way into the De Beers and Omega boutiques, grabbing diamond jewellery and luxury watches before making off in the BMW.

It’s understood that an alarm went off at nearby Tiffany & Co but it’s not thought that anything was stolen from there.

The Royal Exchange is just yards from the Bank of England in the financial heart of the City of London.

It was founded in 1565 by Sir Thomas Gresham as a centre of share-dealing commerce for the city, but these days it acts as an upmarket shopping centre for well-heeled bankers and City traders.

The timing of the raid was well chosen: Saturday night is about the only time of the week when the area is quiet, with City traders away from their desks as the world’s markets are closed.

Police are studying CCTV footage and have appealed for help from the public to trace the car, the stolen items, and the raiders. Pending a stock take by De Beers and Omega, no details have yet been released on the stolen items or their value.

This incident follows last year’s record-breaking raid at Graff in Mayfair in which a reported £40m in gems and jewellery were stolen and for which 4 men were sentenced to a total of 71 years in prison earlier this month. The gems were never recovered.

Last August another London raid netted raiders £1m in jewels in less than a minute in a daylight smash & grab at Mozafarian jewellers, located near Harrods in Knightsbridge.

This is the second such incident in London for De Beers this year, following the £2.5m ‘sledgehammer raid‘ at their shop (as well as Tiffany & Co) across town at the Westfield shopping centre in May.

In the wake of that attack the CEO of De Beers jewellery stores, François Delage, commented that this was “yet another reminder of the timeless allure of diamonds”, which showed an admirable talent for turning a crime into a marketing opportunity for diamonds.

Update, 17th August 2010: Police now say that the retail value of the stolen jewellery is around £380,000. This is a slightly more sober assessment of incurred losses than some press reports yesterday which mentioned figures as high as £4 million.

Speaking of peculiar press reports, the front page of yesterday’s Daily Mirror caught my eye:

Apart from the entirely speculative statement “Gang steal £1m gems at shops“, I fail to understand the headline: “De Beers Monsters“.

Is that some sort of pun? Am I being thick?

I don’t see how De Beers can be called monsters as a result of being robbed, even by the Daily Mirror. Am I missing something?

If you can shed some light, please comment below…

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With diamonds, size is important, right?

We hear often that someone's been told they 'must' get a diamond that's at least 1 carat (or whatever...) but how about going to the opposite end of the scale?

Well that's what a diamond cutter in India set out to do recently by cutting & polishing the world's smallest diamond.

Surat-based Bhavani Gems have unveiled a diamond that weighs just 0.0003 carats, or 0.00006 grams. They've called it the Bhavani Mikro diamond.

One can imagine an unveiling ceremony: a stage with a plinth illuminated by brilliant lighting... dramatic music... and then the curtain is lifted to reveal... well, nothing really. Or nothing very visible, anyway.

For this diamond is about the size of a grain of sand, and yet it has been cut with the same number of facets - 57 - that you'd see on a conventional 'round brilliant' diamond of 1 carat or 100 carats.

The diamond has even been certified by the IGI (International Gemological Institute) - a neat self-promotional trick by them. Diamond grading laboratories usually certify diamonds starting at around 0.20-0.30 carats.

In my previous life at De Beers I had the pleasure and privilege of visiting a number of Bhavani Gems' diamond cutting factories - I actually did a tour of northern Gujarat with their charming founder and CEO Manjibhai Dholakia some years ago - and can vouch for their amazing skills in cutting really small diamonds.

Normally diamonds don't come much smaller than around '1 point' (one hundredth of a carat), but the Swiss watch industry and some other jewellers use diamonds of around 0.002 to 0.005 carats (when they get this small they are referred to as 500 per carat or 200 per carat).

Using the same terminology, this diamond is an incredible 3333 per carat - meaning that you'd need 3333 of them to make up a 1 carat diamond ring!

Rather than producing thousands of such small diamonds to set into diamond rings, I expect that this is a bit of a one-off exercise, designed to showcase the expertise of Bhavani Gems in cutting very small diamonds for the diamond watch industry.

Original post here.

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