The De Beers Group of Companies announced that Senior Vice President of Sightholder Sales Nigel Simson will now assume responsibility as the Senior Vice President of Product Planning at its Global Sightholder Sales business, while Bernard Bradley, who joins De Beers, will assume the position that Simpson currently holds.

Both will be based in Gaborone, Botswana, and will work closely with Paul Rowley and the senior management team at Global Sightholder Sales to continue improving the business’s ability to anticipate and respond to customer needs as it progress on our path to becoming even more customer-centric, De Beers said.

Simson will head up the new Product Planning function that will establish closer integration between Sales, Product Planning and Product Delivery, enabling the delivery of more tailored product and service offerings for rough diamond customers.

Bradley brings with him an outstanding track record of strengthening customer experiences and relationships from a number of senior international sales roles.

Paul Rowley, Executive Vice President of Global Sightholder Sales, said: “I am proud of how our Sales team has performed ever since the business relocated to Botswana and we have achieved great success. However, the world continues to change rapidly and we need to adopt learnings from both inside and outside the sector. I am therefore delighted to welcome Bernard, whose external experience will perfectly complement our outstanding internal expertise and insight.

“I’m equally delighted that Nigel will lead our new Product Planning function. With his unrivalled breadth of knowledge across customers, products and processes, he is ideally placed to work alongside Bernard and the rest of the team to continue improving our offering to customers.”

Simson said: “As we have continued to analyse how best to address our customers’ needs, it’s become clearer that we needed to integrate different parts of the organisation more closely in order to anticipate and meet customer requirements even more effectively. It’s a real privilege to have the chance to lead the newly created function responsible for this work and I believe we can add real value to customers’ businesses through more tailored offerings.”

Bradley, who will join the organisation early in September 2016, said: “The opportunity to join De Beers was one I simply couldn’t turn down. The diamond industry has some amazing opportunities on the horizon and I’m very excited to have the chance to work with the world’s leading diamond experts and most successful diamond companies. I’m really looking forward to working with Paul, Nigel, the rest of the team and the entire customer community.”

Pic Caption: Bernard Bradley