Jefferies Financial Group Inc. operates as a diversified financial services company with a primary focus on investment banking and capital markets. The firm's operations are divided into two main business segments: Investment Banking and Capital Markets, and Asset Management. The Investment Banking and Capital Markets segment generates the vast majority of the company's revenue and offers corporate advisory services (such as mergers and acquisitions and restructuring), equity and debt underwriting, and institutional sales and trading across equities, fixed income, currencies, and commodities. The Asset Management segment provides alternative investment management services to institutional and high-net-worth investors globally, while also investing the firm's own seed capital into affiliated strategies. Geographically, Jefferies maintains a strong global footprint with significant operations in the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, and the Asia-Pacific region. Originally founded in 1962 as a broker-dealer, the modern entity is the result of a 2013 merger with Leucadia National Corporation, which subsequently divested most of its non-financial merchant banking assets to rebrand and focus entirely on the core Jefferies investment banking franchise. Today, Jefferies competes with major bulge-bracket banks and elite boutique advisory firms in the global capital markets.
