Standard Chartered reportedly lost $400 million on risky diamond loans.
In 2009, while most banks were reeling from the financial crisis and paring back risk, Standard Chartered dove headlong into the dangerous game of diamond lending, according to a report from Franz Wild, Thomas Biesheuvel and Stephen Morris in Bloomberg Businessweek.
The London-based bank began courting a cadre of diamond barons, whose companies would eventually borrow billions to finance their business of buying rough stones from miners like De Beers, cleaning them up, and then selling them to retailers, according to the report.