Jefferies Financial to Simplify Corporate Structure by Merging Jefferies Group LLC

The investment bank and financial services firm Jefferies Financial Group announced that it expects to spin off to its shareholders its holdings in Vitesse Energy prior to the end of 2022.

That spin-off will involve the formation of a new standalone entity, Vitesse Energy, Inc., that will ultimately be a publicly traded company listed on the New York Stock Exchange. Jefferies expects that its ownership interests in Vitesse Energy, Inc. will be distributed tax-free on a pro rata basis to all shareholders. At May 31, 2022, Vitesse had a net book value and net tangible book value of $427 million.

In addition to spinning off Vitesse, Jefferies has agreed to sell Idaho Timber in two transactions at a combined sale price of $239 million, resulting in an estimated pre-tax gain of $140 million. These transactions are expected to close in August.

In addition, Jefferies expects to streamline and simplify its corporate structure by merging Jefferies Group LLC (Jefferies Group) into Jefferies Financial Group Inc. (Jefferies Financial Group) by fiscal year-end 2022.

In connection with the planned corporate consolidation, Teri Gendron, CFO, and John Dalton, Controller and Chief Accounting Officer, have decided that they will remain at Jefferies through the first half of 2023, after which they will pursue opportunities outside Jefferies. Upon the completion of the entity merger, Matt Larson, currently Jefferies Group's CFO, and Teri will be co-CFOs of Jefferies Financial Group. Matt will become CFO after Teri departs in 2023.

Rich Handler, CEO of Jefferies, and Brian Friedman, President of Jefferies, remarked:"Today's announcement is yet another milestone in our long-term plan to focus Jefferies on its core businesses – investment banking and capital markets. Over the last decade since we combined Leucadia National Corporation (Leucadia) and Jefferies Group and ultimately became Jefferies Financial Group, we have made substantial and successful progress. As we have made plain to our various stakeholders, our goal was to optimize value realization from the Merchant Banking portfolio while we continue to build Jefferies."

"We are incredibly proud of our entire global team at Jefferies and, while the current market climate certainly presents short-term challenges, we could not be more optimistic about Jefferies' ability to continue to grow and best serve our incredibly supportive and loyal client base. Today's announcements will allow us to continue to focus on our core priorities and do our best to deliver for all of our important constituencies,"they added.