De Beers is a family of companies that dominate the diamond, diamond mining, diamond trading and industrial diamond manufacturing sectors.
De Beers is well known for its monopolistic practices throughout the 20th century, whereby it used its dominant position to manipulate the international diamond market.
In 2000, the De Beers model changed, due to factors such as the decision by producers in Russia, Canada and Australia, to distribute diamonds outside of the De Beers channel, thus effectively ending the monopoly. Current major players in the diamond industry are the African producers Debswana and Namdeb, De Beers, Rio Tinto, BHP Billiton, Lev Leviev, Harry Winston, and Alrosa.