The H.Goldie Team
Mark Boston – Chairman
Mark Boston’s now 40 year long voyage of discovery into the fascinating and often very challenging world of the international diamond business, started at the age of seventeen in 1962, when Cedric Goldie invited him to become a trainee rough diamond broker in the company founded by his father, Hugo Goldie in 1910. Given the cordial and close relations existing between brokers and the Diamond Trading Company, it was the normal practice for trainee brokers to be allowed by the DTC to acquire a basic training in rough diamond sorting at the company’s famous Charterhouse Street offices and Mark trained for two years in the various diamond departments, gaining experience in classifying rough diamond assortments and the workings of the famous sight sales system, from which the term “sightholders” is derived.
Having completed his introduction into the basic skills of rough diamond sorting at the Diamond Trading Company, in 1964 Mark was sent to Antwerp, Belgium, then the world’s largest manufacturing as well as trading centre, where he spent a further year being instructed in polished sorting under the supervision of Mr. Max Majorovic, head of assortment at S. Grunberger & Son, a leading Belgian sightholder, specialising in the manufacture of “Melee” sizes. 
In 1965 Mark returned to London and worked in the offices of H. Goldie & Co. Ltd., assisting in the representation of Goldie’s sightholders and became increasingly involved in an association with two other leading ‘Syndicate’ brokers, Messrs. John Abrahams and Guy Tooth, who represented a number of sightholders in New York, Antwerp and Amsterdam as well as several in France (St. Claude, Jura) and one in Germany. Although Mark’s parents had married in New Delhi in 1945, he had never visited India prior to 1968 when he undertook his first trip to Bombay and Surat where a nascent cutting industry was emerging, based on polishing the near gem rejections from the Belgian and Israeli cutting industries. Relations with Indian diamond companies were developed, leading to the appointment of Goldie’s first Indian sightholders, Messrs. Sevantilal Fakirchand, in 1969 and the start of an enduring relationship with the evolving Indian industry.
In 1972 Mark took up residence in Antwerp, having been given the task of establishing a Belgian liaison office for the associated brokers, Abrahams-Tooth-Goldie, who represented a number of prominent sightholders at the time, including S. Grunberger & Sons, IDH Diamonds, Emiel Vets en Zonen, S. Muller & Sons, Fischler Diamonds, L. Silberman and Almax Diamonds. During his stay in Antwerp Mark worked closely with Kempen, manufacturers and successfully introduced a number of prominent Kempen manufacturers to the DTC, including E. Denckens, Jan Smets, Diaroos, Diamanthandel Willems, Almax, Le Diamant N.V. In 1974 Mark became the first London based diamond broker to make an extensive tour of the emerging diamond markets in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Dubai and other Gulf states. Mark was honoured to have been invited to join the organising committee of the major Antwerp World Diamond Festival event held in the city in 1973 at the peak of Antwerp’s prominence as a trading and manufacturing centre before a gradual decline of manufacturing in Belgium set in, accentuated by competition from Israel and India and the appalling effect on the industry of the fall in polished prices following the collapse of the investment driven ‘boom/bust’ collapse of certificated prices in 1980. During these very difficult and challenging early eighties, Mark’s efforts were divided between protecting the interests of a small group of Belgian and American clients and a slow but steady increase in the number of Indian clients, reflecting the growing importance of the Indian industry which had carved out a major niche for itself in the manufacturing of makeable rough and multi clivage. 
At the same time the recession of the early eighties took its toll on both sightholders and brokers and Messrs. Abrahams and Tooth were absorbed into I. Hennig & Co. Ltd., while Goldie retained its independence and a small number of loyal clients. Mark turned his attention to the developing industry of India and from 1988 to 1998 became a co founder and sponsor of the Indian International Design Competition, established to raise the status of your designers in the emerging export orientated jewellery established in Seepz in 1985. Mark met Goldie’s recently appointed marketing director, Mark Walker, at this time, who was then DECTA’s advisor (U.K. government agency consultants to the project). The overall success of the project was demonstrated at the end of the competition where several of the young Indian designers entered the prestigious Diamond International Awards and won world recognition. In 1991 Goldie had further success in India with the appointment of India’s first Surat based sightholder, C. Mahendra Exports, recognising the important growth of companies using Surat as a base. 
Mark Boston’s latest major project, as yet unfulfilled, is to promote the publication of a book which will do justice to the largely untold, but truly remarkable story of the rebirth of India’s diamond industry, undoubtedly one of India’s greatest post independence economic success stories. Mark Boston is married and has three daughters. |