In 1902 a young man of German origin, Ernest Oppenheimer, arrived in Kimberley to run the local office of his family's diamond-trading company, Dunkelsbuhler & Co. The establishment of De Beers Consolidated Mines in 1888 had brought the diamond producers in Kimberley under centralised control in which Dunkelsbuhler was involved on the trading side. Oppenheimer turned the firm's attention to the newly discovered gold fields on the Witwatersrand. He bought up a number of gold- mining companies on the far East Rand in particular, and by 1916 his newly formed firm, the Rand Selection Company, had taken control of most of the richest gold fields in the sector. But buying up and especially developing these gold fields during World War 1 posed challenges. European investment was in short supply, and the Oppenheimers' German connections were not helpful in raising capital in Europe. So in 1917 Oppenheimer founded Anglo American to try to capture the huge investment potential of the American...
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