Leucadia National Corporation has today announced its official rebranding to Jefferies Financial Group Inc., which will trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol JEF effective tomorrow.
The new corporate identity reflects the company’s greater focus on a particular asset and completes its ongoing transformation from having a diverse and quite random set of assets into a financial services giant.
Leucadia, , has recently announced plans to sell its non-finance assets for nearly $1.4 billion. As a part of its strategy to focus on financial services, the oil-to-beef conglomerate sold its 48% stake in the US meat packing company National Beef for about $900. It also sold its equity interest in auto dealer business Garcadia for $425 million.
Leucadia took control of Jefferies in November 2012 for a price of $2.8 billion and since then it has been making a significant capital investment into the business. As part of the deal, Leucadia installed Jefferies’ management as its top executives and has been also building up teams from major rivals such as Deutsche Bank and Credit Suisse.
Aside from Jefferies, the company will continue to use the Leucadia name in its asset management, residential real estate development as well as commercial mortgage banking.
Jefferies’ CEO, Rich Handler, and President, Brian Friedman, commented: “Changing our name to Jefferies Financial Group Inc. reflects that we are now a diversified financial services company, and Jefferies is by far our largest business and our engine of opportunity. Jefferies Financial Group Inc. better reflects who we are today and going forward, materially aids the brand recognition of our Jefferies investment banking and trading operations, and unifies our presence and our prominence in the financial community.”
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