MOSCOW: Russian diamond miner Alrosa ALRS.MM is not interested in buying Canada’s Dominion Diamond Corp DDC.TO DDC.N, Alrosa’s Chief Executive Sergey Ivanov said on Tuesday. Dominion Diamond Corp, the target of an unsolicited $1.1 billion bid by U.S. billionaire Dennis Washington, said on Monday it would launch a formal sale process for the company. “We are not interested at this stage,” Ivanov said in an emailed response to Reuters’ questions. Dominion Diamond’s shares rose on Monday on market speculation that global miners including Rio Tinto (RIO.L: Quote) (RIO.AX: Quote) and Anglo American’s (AAL.L: Quote) De Beers unit may now enter the fray and make a bid for the company, the world’s third-largest diamond producer by value.
Analysts also speculated that Alrosa, the world’s largest producer of rough diamonds, and private equity players could be interested in Dominion, which owns the Ekati diamond mine in Canada’s Northwest Territories. Ivanov, Alrosa’s newly appointed chief executive, has already said he would remain committed to Alrosa’s strategy, which has focused on mining, selling non-core assets and growing its own production.
