We Work for You

This may be one of the more surprising and least obvious notes you will receive from us in your hopefully decades at Jefferies. We are reaching out to reinforce to everyone at Jefferies that you please think of the senior leaders of our firm, including the two of us in particular, as partners who work for you and not vice versa. We want everyone to know what many of you already know and embrace — we are here to help you best serve our clients, recruit or retain the best people, navigate your personal careers, and help all of us to continue to build Jefferies to be the best firm possible. 

Specifically, we want to be sure that, whenever it is worthwhile and helpful, you consider including one of us (or other senior leaders) in meetings, pitches, phone calls and other efforts with our clients and prospects where we can add value or otherwise help make a difference. As we said, many of you do take full advantage of having us work for you and as a result we spend a ton of time with some clients. We love doing this. The only purpose of this note is to remind and highlight to the rest of you that there are at least two other people who report to you that are willing, fairly able and incredibly eager to help you maximize our opportunity and results. 

We recognize that by virtue of our titles and longevity, if not as a result of our skills and ability, clients may value our presence in a meeting or a discussion. To that end, we try to join you whenever you request that we do so, unless we have a conflict or think our presence won’t be additive. We are happy to make this evaluation with you. We would be disappointed not to be asked to a meeting because you are concerned about our time constraints or feel it is an imposition to ask. Please let us judge how to juggle the demand and allocate our time. We only ask you to understand that sometimes it just won’t be possible to join you because of other obligations. We say all this because we appreciate your respect, but don’t need any deference or protection. We will never be upset about your asking us to join a meeting that we determine to decline. Similarly, we won’t be troubled if we attend a meeting and find out that either we couldn’t add value or there was no opportunity at all for us. That’s life in the fast lane and we will continue to live it with you.

Please don’t hesitate to draw us (and other senior leaders) into a personal relationship. We know that few things in life are perfect and we are accustomed to working through challenges and helping overcome mistakes or problems. It is far better for us to make the effort as a tribe than to fail alone or deploy an incomplete team. Moreover, we will determine between the two of us (and other senior leaders) who is best suited and available for each particular opportunity. Nothing gives us more pleasure at Jefferies than helping you best achieve our clients’ objectives. Enough said.

Looking forward to spending more time with you and thanks for hiring us,

Rich and Brian