Beny Steinmetz is an Israeli diamond merchant and entrepreneur who, through his company Steinmetz Diamonds (later operating under the BSG umbrella), became one of the most influential figures in the high-end rough and polished diamond trade during the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. He is best known to the gemmological world for commissioning the cutting and polishing of the 59.60-carat Steinmetz Pink, a Fancy Vivid Pink diamond of internally flawless clarity that remains one of the largest and finest pink diamonds ever documented.

Career and the Steinmetz Diamond Group

Steinmetz built his business from rough-diamond trading, establishing relationships with major producing entities including De Beers, from which Steinmetz Diamonds held a long-standing sightholder position — granting the firm access to rough parcels at the periodic De Beers sights. At its peak, the Steinmetz Diamond Group operated cutting and polishing facilities, maintained a significant presence in Antwerp and Tel Aviv, and was regarded as one of the premier manufacturers of large, high-quality polished diamonds. The group was particularly noted for its expertise in fancy-colour diamonds, a technically demanding speciality requiring intimate knowledge of crystal morphology, colour zoning, and the optical behaviour of light within coloured rough.

The Steinmetz Pink

The stone most indelibly associated with Beny Steinmetz's name is the diamond that bore it. The rough crystal, weighing approximately 132 carats, was sourced from the Premier Mine (now Cullinan Mine) in South Africa. Over a period of roughly twenty months, Steinmetz Diamonds' craftsmen studied and cut the rough, ultimately yielding a 59.60-carat oval mixed-cut stone graded by the Gemological Institute of America as Fancy Vivid Pink — the highest saturation grade the GIA awards to pink diamonds — with an internally flawless clarity grade. The stone was unveiled at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., in 2003 alongside four companion pink diamonds cut from the same rough, collectively presented as the Steinmetz Pink Collection.

In 2007 the diamond was sold to a private buyer and renamed the Pink Star. It subsequently appeared at Sotheby's Geneva in November 2013, where it sold for approximately 83 million US dollars — a world auction record at the time — before the buyer defaulted. Sotheby's ultimately acquired the stone. In April 2017 it was sold again at Sotheby's Hong Kong for 71.2 million US dollars to Chow Tai Fook Enterprises, which renamed it the CTF Pink Star. It remains the most expensive gemstone ever sold at auction as of the mid-2020s.

Other Notable Stones

Beyond the Pink Star, Steinmetz Diamonds was associated with several other exceptional polished diamonds, including large D-colour and fancy-colour stones that appeared at major auction houses and in private treaty sales. The firm's reputation for handling extraordinary rough and producing world-class polished goods placed it alongside a small number of elite manufacturers — among them Graff Diamonds and Leviev — who effectively defined the upper register of the polished diamond market in the early 2000s.

Later Developments and Restructuring

From the mid-2010s onward, the Steinmetz Group faced significant legal and reputational difficulties unrelated to its diamond manufacturing activities, centred on mining concession disputes in Guinea. These proceedings, extensively covered in the international business press, led to a restructuring of the group's various entities. The diamond manufacturing and trading operations were substantially wound down or reorganised, and the Steinmetz name receded from its earlier prominence in the trade press. The gemmological legacy, however, remains intact: the stones cut under the Steinmetz banner — above all the CTF Pink Star — stand as benchmarks for what is achievable in the cutting and presentation of exceptional fancy-colour diamonds.

Significance to the Trade

Within the coloured-diamond world, Beny Steinmetz's principal contribution is the demonstration that extraordinary rough, handled with patience and technical mastery, can yield polished stones that reset market expectations. The twenty-month cutting programme for the Pink Star, the decision to present companion stones rather than a single isolated gem, and the choice of the Smithsonian as the unveiling venue all reflected a sophisticated understanding of how exceptional diamonds acquire cultural as well as commercial value. That approach has influenced how subsequent record-quality rough — whether pink, blue, or colourless — is brought to market.