Leucadia Rebrands to Jefferies Financial Group, to Trade with Ticker Symbol “JEF” in NYSE

LeucadiaLeucadia National Corporation, an investment firm has announced its official rebranding to Jefferies Financial Group Inc. after its shareholders have voted in favour of the company’s planned name change. The name change takes effect immediately and the shares of the company will traded in New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol JEF from Thursday morning.

The planned rebranding of the company was done in order to reflect the company’s greater focus in the asset management and merchant banking activities rather focusing it as a diverse and quite random set of companies. Leucadia has recently announced that it will be hiving off few of its non-core and non-core financial assets for nearly $1.4 billion. The deal includes selling its 48 percent stake in the US meatpacking company National ‎Beef for about $900 million. It also sold its equity interest in auto dealer business Garcadia for ‎‎$425 million. ‎

Leucadia has acquired Jefferies in November 2012 for a consideration of $2.9 billion and has been making a significant investment in the company and has appointed senior executives from Deutsche Bank and Credit Suisse in the Jefferie’s management.

Another Jefferies company, online retail Fx brokerage FXCM Group also expects a name change in the near future as the company wants Leucadia to disappear from the brand now.

Jefferies’ CEO Rich Handler, and President Brian Friedman said:

FXCM“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. We will continue to use the wonderful Leucadia name in our asset management and merchant banking activities where its reputation for long-term value creation is widely recognized.”

Further added: “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.”