Day 1 To The Start Of Jefferies 60th Year, It?s Always Been About Our Clients and Our Team

Dear Clients, Fellow Employee-Partners, and Friends of Jefferies,

On October 2nd, 1962, Boyd Jefferies borrowed $30,000 and purchased a seat on the Pacific Coast Stock Exchange.The Jefferies firm grew to be the pioneer of the “third market,” which enabled institutional investors to trade listed securities with each other in an over-the-counter manner. Tomorrow, we begin the 60th year that Jefferies has been in business, and while a lot has changed, much has remained the same. In particular, the philosophy our firm was built on 60 years ago:

1. There is no limit to what one can achieve.
2. It’s amazing how lucky one gets when you consistently out-hustle the competition.
3. Clients First, Always.

The thousands of people who helped build Jefferies over the past almost six decades, including the 4500-plus of you here today who have been instrumental in super-charging that growth in the most recent periods, should be proud to see what Jefferies stands for and is today. Our original small stock trading business has been transformed into a full-service global investment banking and capital markets firm. Today, our equities platform has exceptional research, best in class electronic trading, highly specialized sector trading, prime brokerage, derivatives, convertible bonds, portfolio trading and wealth management advisory.

There was no fixed income business in the original version of Jefferies, but today our fixed income business is truly global in scale and presence. We serve our clients in investment grade, high yield, bank loans, emerging markets, municipal bonds, structured credit, mortgages, rates and distressed securities.

Instrumental to the growth of our trading businesses are our operations, support and tech teams. They are all state of the art and enable our entire Jefferies team to support our clients in good times and bad, while always protecting the foundation of the company. We started as a trading firm serving institutional clients, and today Jefferies has never been in a stronger position to carry on that legacy. 

By fully leveraging the capabilities of our significant capital markets business, we have spent decades (especially the last 20 years) building a global investment banking and capital markets origination business that has become an indispensable and leading pillar of the firm. Because of our strong history, relationships and trust with the very best investors around the globe, today we are an important partner with thousands of prestigious investment banking clients. Effectively, because of our “one firm” team mentality, our sales, trading and research teams have enabled Jefferies to become the largest independent, U.S. headquartered, full-service investment banking firm. Today we have more than 1,300 investment bankers covering every industry with capabilities in virtually all products and services on a truly global basis. This business was started from scratch in 1990. Literally, every single relationship that has been established with our banking clients has been based on the same three principles that Jefferies was founded on in 1962. Our investment banking clients have rewarded us by trusting us to be their advisor with their most important and complex challenges and opportunities. They have been incredibly loyal over the years, as we all consistently strive to prove ourselves worthy of their trust every single day. As a result, approximately 70% of our banking revenues are from repeat clients. We are incredibly gratified and humbled by this reality. To put the magnitude of our growth into proper perspective, for our third quarter of 2021 that just ended, our investment banking team closed 424 banking transactions (6.5 deals per day) with total aggregate deal value approaching one-quarter of a trillion dollars. That is a LOT of trust from an enormous number of the very best companies in the world. This business was built person by person, deal by deal, over three decades, throughout all types of financial markets and by many incredibly talented individuals (at all levels of seniority) who have worked tirelessly and with enormous pride to serve our clients. They partnered successfully with our global sales, trading, research and support teams, and this is the result of their work to date: 

Note: As reported in Jefferies Group public filings / press releases. Excludes predecessor first quarter ending 2/28/13. Investment Banking Revenues for the excluded quarter total $288 million. In the first quarter of 2018, we made changes to the presentation of our “Revenues by Source” to better align the manner in which we describe and present the results of our performance with the manner in which we manage our business activities and serve our clients. For a further discussion of these changes, see Jefferies Group LLC’s Form 8-K filed on March 20, 2018. We have presented prior fiscal years 2016 and 2017 to reflect results on a comparable basis, as reported in Jefferies Group public filings. Periods prior to fiscal 2016 do not reflect these changes in the presentation of revenues by source. “Predecessor / Successor” line delineates merger with Jefferies Financial Group

We may be entering our 60th year at Jefferies, but this is a firm that feels like we are all in our 20’s — okay, maybe our 30’s. The reason for this is that when we wake up in the morning, we see opportunity to improve and grow in every direction we look. We are energized by our long-term Jefferies partners who have been with us for much of the heavy lifting that got us to where we are today. We are incredibly excited about and grateful for all the new Jefferies partners that have and who will join us to help us best navigate the future (our headcount grew by more than 600 people or 17% over the past 18 months). At the end of the day, the two groups of people that are entirely responsible for our results to date are our incredible clients and our more than 4,500-strong team of Jefferies partners. Without all of you, there would be no milestone birthday year ahead, there would be no results to be proud of, and certainly there would be no Jefferies.

Thank you all and happy birthday year to everyone that touches Jefferies,

Rich and Brian