Ernest Oppenheimer

Sir Ernest Oppenheimer was a South African diamond and gold mining entrepreneur and financier, born in Friedberg in the German Empire in 1880. He started at seventeen with the London diamond brokerage Dunkelsbuhler and Company, and in 1902 was sent to Kimberley as its buyer, later serving as the town's mayor. In 1917, with the American engineer William Lincoln Honnold and financial help from J. P. Morgan, he launched the Anglo American Corporation, and he remained its chairman until 1953. In 1927 he gained control of De Beers, whose chairmanship he took in 1929, and he consolidated its monopoly over the world diamond trade, which drew controversies over price fixing and antitrust behaviour. His son Harry succeeded him in the business.