François Graff is the Chief Executive Officer of Graff Diamonds and the son of the firm's founder, Laurence Graff OBE. As the second generation of the Graff family to lead the business, François has guided one of the world's most celebrated privately held jewellery houses through a period of significant global expansion, deepening the firm's engagement with exceptional rough diamonds, finished high jewellery, and coloured gemstones of the first order. His tenure has been defined by a consistent philosophy inherited from his father: that the acquisition of the finest raw material, treated with the highest standard of craftsmanship, is the only sustainable foundation for a house of Graff's standing.

Background and Family Legacy

Laurence Graff founded Graff Diamonds in London in 1960, beginning as a craftsman and trader before building a vertically integrated enterprise that encompasses rough diamond sourcing, cutting and polishing, jewellery manufacture, and retail. The house's reputation rests on its willingness — and financial capacity — to acquire the most important rough and polished diamonds that appear on the market, a strategy that has brought it into possession of more D-colour, flawless, and historically significant stones than virtually any other private entity.

François Graff was raised within this culture of connoisseurship and has spoken publicly about the formative experience of growing up surrounded by extraordinary gemstones and the craftsmen who work them. He joined the family business and, over time, assumed increasing operational and strategic responsibility before taking the role of Chief Executive. The precise timeline of his formal appointment has not been disclosed in detail — Graff Diamonds, as a private company, releases limited biographical information — but his leadership role has been publicly acknowledged for well over a decade.

Global Retail Expansion

Under François Graff's stewardship, the house has extended its retail footprint substantially beyond its historic London base. Graff boutiques now operate in major financial and luxury capitals including New York, Hong Kong, Geneva, Dubai, Tokyo, and a number of other cities across Asia, the Middle East, Europe, and the Americas. This expansion reflects a deliberate strategy to position Graff not merely as a London jeweller with an international reputation, but as a genuinely global house capable of serving ultra-high-net-worth clients wherever they reside or travel.

The boutique environments themselves are designed to reflect the calibre of the merchandise: Graff stores are among the most architecturally considered in the luxury jewellery sector, typically featuring bespoke interiors that allow individual stones and finished pieces to be examined in conditions approximating those of a private viewing room. This approach aligns with François Graff's broader emphasis on the client relationship as a long-term, curatorial engagement rather than a transactional one.

High-Jewellery Collections and Creative Direction

François Graff has overseen the development of Graff's high-jewellery collections, which are presented with increasing regularity at international watch and jewellery fairs, most notably the Salon International de la Haute Horlogerie (SIHH, now Watches and Wonders) and Baselworld, as well as through private client events. These collections demonstrate the house's characteristic approach: stones of exceptional size, colour, and clarity are the starting point, and the jewellery design is conceived to serve the gemstone rather than to impose an independent aesthetic upon it.

Coloured gemstones have featured prominently in Graff's high-jewellery output under François's leadership. The house has worked with important rubies, sapphires, and emeralds, as well as rarer materials including alexandrite and Paraíba-type tourmaline, always sourcing at the uppermost tier of quality. Graff's coloured-stone pieces are typically accompanied by laboratory reports from leading gemmological institutes, a practice consistent with the standards expected at the level of the market in which the house operates.

The house also entered the high-end watchmaking sector in a meaningful way during this period, establishing Graff as a manufacturer of complicated timepieces that incorporate exceptional gem-setting. This diversification, pursued under François's leadership, reflects an understanding that the ultra-luxury client increasingly expects a single house to address multiple categories of connoisseurship.

The Lesedi La Rona and Major Diamond Acquisitions

The most publicly discussed transaction of François Graff's tenure as Chief Executive was Graff's acquisition of the Lesedi La Rona, a rough diamond recovered from the Karowe mine in Botswana by Lucara Diamond Corp in November 2015. Weighing 1,109 carats, the Lesedi La Rona was the largest gem-quality rough diamond discovered in more than a century, surpassed in recorded history only by the Cullinan (3,106.75 carats, recovered in 1905). The stone is a Type IIa diamond — a classification indicating the virtual absence of nitrogen impurities, associated with exceptional transparency and often with the finest colourless or near-colourless appearance.

The Lesedi La Rona was initially offered at auction by Sotheby's in June 2016, where it failed to reach its reserve price. Graff subsequently acquired it through private negotiation, with a purchase price reported at approximately $53 million USD. The acquisition was widely understood as a statement of intent: only a house with both the capital and the technical expertise to plan and execute the cutting of a stone of this complexity could responsibly take on such a commission.

Graff's team of master cutters studied the rough for an extended period before commencing work. The primary yield was a cushion-cut diamond of 302.37 carats, named the Graff Lesedi La Rona, which became the largest square emerald-cut (cushion-cut) diamond in the world to receive a grading report from the Gemological Institute of America. The GIA graded the finished stone D colour, IF (internally flawless) — the highest grades attainable on both scales. Sixty-seven additional polished diamonds were recovered from the remaining rough material. The Graff Lesedi La Rona was subsequently sold to a private collector.

This transaction exemplifies the model that François Graff has sustained and amplified: the willingness to commit extraordinary resources to the acquisition and transformation of historically significant rough, with the confidence that the finished result will find a buyer among the world's most discerning collectors.

The Lesedi La Rona was not an isolated case. Graff has, under François's leadership, acquired and worked a number of other important rough and polished diamonds, including the Graff Vendôme (a large D-colour pear-shape), various stones from the Diavik and Jwaneng mines, and significant coloured diamonds including fancy vivid yellows and pinks. The house's track record in coloured diamond acquisition and cutting is particularly notable: Graff has handled more large, high-quality fancy coloured diamonds than any other single jewellery house.

Philanthropy and the Graff Foundation

François Graff has continued and extended the philanthropic commitments established by Laurence Graff, particularly through the Graff Foundation's work in southern Africa. The Foundation has funded educational infrastructure — most notably schools — in Botswana, Lesotho, and South Africa, countries that are central to the diamond supply chain from which the Graff business has long benefited. This engagement reflects a philosophy, articulated by both Laurence and François Graff in public statements, that the communities from which exceptional diamonds originate should receive tangible benefit from the wealth those diamonds generate.

The philanthropic programme has included the construction and operation of multiple schools serving thousands of children, as well as healthcare and community development initiatives. The work of the Graff Foundation in Botswana has been particularly visible, given the country's status as the world's leading producer of gem diamonds by value and the source of the Lesedi La Rona.

The House Under Private Ownership

Graff Diamonds remains entirely privately held, a fact that distinguishes it from most of its peers in the ultra-luxury jewellery sector. LVMH, Richemont, and Kering between them control the majority of the world's most recognised jewellery maisons; Graff, along with a small number of other independent houses, has declined to enter this consolidation. François Graff has been consistent in articulating the advantages of private ownership: the ability to take a long-term view of acquisitions, to decline commercially attractive but aesthetically compromised opportunities, and to maintain the singular focus on quality that defines the house's identity.

Reports of potential public listings or strategic investments have circulated periodically in the financial press — most notably in 2010, when a Hong Kong IPO was reportedly considered before being withdrawn — but the house has remained under exclusive family control. This structure allows François Graff to operate with a degree of discretion and patience that would be difficult to sustain under the quarterly reporting obligations of a publicly listed entity.

Significance in the Wider Gem Trade

François Graff's position in the gemstone world extends beyond his role as the head of a retail jewellery house. Graff's buying activity at the rough diamond level — through participation in De Beers sightholder arrangements, Alrosa tenders, and open-market purchases of exceptional individual stones — makes the house a meaningful participant in the price formation of top-quality diamonds. When Graff acquires a stone of the calibre of the Lesedi La Rona, the transaction sets a reference point for the valuation of comparable material.

Similarly, Graff's engagement with important coloured gemstones — rubies from Mozambique and Myanmar, sapphires from Kashmir and Ceylon, Colombian emeralds — contributes to the market's understanding of what constitutes the upper boundary of quality and value in those categories. The house's willingness to pay prices that reflect the true rarity of the finest material helps to sustain the broader market's confidence in coloured gemstones as a category of serious collecting.

François Graff has, in this sense, inherited and perpetuated a role that his father created: that of a buyer of last resort for the world's most important gems, a house whose appetite for the exceptional is both a commercial strategy and a form of connoisseurship that benefits the wider trade by establishing and defending standards of quality.

Further Reading

• GIA Gems & Gemology — The Lesedi La Rona Diamond
• GIA — Grading the Graff Lesedi La Rona