Sierra Leone: The Ebola Crisis Is Over, but Tiffany Is Still Paying for It

Aug 27, 2015 | Kyle Stock, Bloomberg
View Original

The recent Ebola outbreak in West Africa is hitting Tiffany & Co.'s bottom line. In 2011, the company lent about $50 million to a miner in Sierra Leone named Koidu to secure a steady stream of diamonds, and although the mine had previously struggled with violent worker strikes, it was expected to produce around 575,000 carats a year. That forecast was before the mine, close to the Guinea border in Eastern Sierra Leone, became the virtual epicenter of the Ebola outbreak last year.