Luxury jeweller Fabergé sold to tech investor in $50m deal

The Guardian

10 hours ago

Fabergé, the jeweller famed for its imperial Russian Easter eggs, has been sold to a technology investor in a $50m (£37m) deal.
Gemfields, which mines coloured gemstones in Africa, has agreed to sell Fabergé to SMG Capital, a US investment firm controlled by the tech backer Sergei Mosunov.
The struggling miner, which bought Fabergé in 2013 for $142m from the private equity company Pallinghurst, put the company up for sale in December, when political unrest in Mozambique prompted it to temporarily freeze operations at its ruby mine.
Fabergé, which was founded in 1882 by Peter Carl Fabergé, is one of the most renowned jewellers in the world but has come under pressure amid a downturn in the luxury goods market. It made revenues of $13.4m in 2024, down from $15.7m the previous year.
Sean Gilbertson, the chief executive of Gemfields, described the deal as 'the end of an era'.
He said: 'Fabergé has played a key role in raising the profile of the coloured gemstones mined by Gemfields and we will certainly miss its marketing leverage and star power.'
Mosunov, a venture capitalist and startup investor, said it was a 'great honour … to become the custodian of such an outstanding and globally recognised brand'. Mosunov is a Russian national, based in the UK.
'Fabergé's unique heritage, with ties to Russia, England, France and the USA, opens significant opportunities for further strengthening its position in the global luxury market and expanding its international presence,' he said.
Fabergé is best known for the ornate eggs it made for the Russian royal family before the 1917 revolution. The jeweller began making Imperial Easter eggs when Tsar Alexander III first commissioned them as a present for his wife, Tsarina Maria Feodorovna, in 1885. There are 50 Imperial Easter eggs in collections around the world.
During the Russian revolution, the Bolsheviks seized the Fabergé workshops and closed down production. The family fled across Europe to Germany, Finland and Switzerland.
The brand was revived under various iterations over the course of the 20th century, and was sold for $180m in 1984. Three years later it acquired the Elizabeth Arden brand for $700m. In 1989, the consumer goods group Unilever then bought Fabergé for $1.55bn. The brand was relaunched by the Fabergé family in 2009.
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While Fabergé is best known for its multimillion-pound Easter eggs, with a collection valued as high as £52m when auctioned in 2004, it has a number of other highly valued collector ranges, as well as lines of jewellery and watches.
This spring the Castle Howard Fabergé range was put up for auction, an array of animal models carved from stones such as topaz and nephrite.
Gemfields said it would use proceeds from the sale to help fund its mining operations in Mozambique and Zambia.
Shares in the miner, which is dual-listed on London's junior stock market and Johannesburg's exchange, have fallen by about 70% from their peak in 2023, as the miner has struggled against over supply in the emerald market. In June the company told investors that the opening of a new mine in Mozambique had been delayed because of problems around illegal mining and work permits.