Jefferies Investment Bank: Responding with Transparency, (A) and (B)

Authors
Baumann, J, Canner, J., and O'Rourke, J. S. (Editor)
Region
North America
Topic
Strategy & General Management
Accounting & Finance
Length
15 pages
Keywords
investment bank
rating agencies
downgrading
stock
market effects
Copyright Holder
Notre Dame
Student Price
$4.00
Target Audience
Graduate Students
Undergraduate Students

Jefferies & Company, the most rapidly growing medium-sized investment bank, quickly became the focus of many ratings agencies upon the collapse of MF Global. While many of the ratings agencies found no need for concern, Egan-Jones concluded the contrary. The little known rating agency published a report downgrading Jefferies’s outlook, sending Jefferies’s stock plummeting downward with no end in sight.

Learning Outcomes
  1. Restore value to Jefferies’s shareholders through instilling confidence in the marketplace.
  2. Use the existing crisis as a platform to communicate company values, increasing brand equity in the marketplace.
  3. Maintain existing and continue to originate new client relationships in light of the recent crisis.
  4. Gain an understanding from the current crisis, allowing senior management to develop a strategy to limit the impact of similar issues in the future.