Chairman Ian Cumming and President Joseph Steinberg published their annual shareholder letter to Leucadia National Corporation (LUK, Financial).
Like great investors such as Warren Buffett and Prem Watsa, the Cumming and Steinberg team also show their scorecard at the beginning of their letter. Since1978, the company’s stock price has appreciated 28.3%. For the year of 2010, book value per share increased 59.1%, and for the period from 1979 to 2010, the same matrix increased 19.6%.
It makes good reading. This is what they had to say on Jefferies Groups, their investment in US public companies:
Read the full text at www.leucadia.com
Like great investors such as Warren Buffett and Prem Watsa, the Cumming and Steinberg team also show their scorecard at the beginning of their letter. Since1978, the company’s stock price has appreciated 28.3%. For the year of 2010, book value per share increased 59.1%, and for the period from 1979 to 2010, the same matrix increased 19.6%.
It makes good reading. This is what they had to say on Jefferies Groups, their investment in US public companies:
Jefferies Group, Inc. (NYSE:JEF) is a full-service investment bank and institutional securities ï¬rm. Jefferies offers its customers capital markets executions, mergers and acquisitions, restructuring and other advisory services. They have 30 ofï¬ces in 10 countries.
In April 2008, Leucadia sold to Jefferies 10 million Leucadia common shares and received 26,585,310 Jefferies common shares and $100 million in cash. Including shares acquired in open market purchases, Leucadia owns 49,351,385 Jefferies common shares, approximately 28%, for a total investment of $812.4 million. At December 31, 2010, Leucadia carries Jefferies on its books at fair value of $1.3 billion. Separately, our investment in Jefferies High Yield Trading, LLC had a decent year and earned 6%.
In the last few years Jefferies has expanded across the globe and hired, from other similar institutions, talented people or groups thereof, moving from a boutique ï¬rm to a worldwide fullservice investment bank. Quite an amazing feat in a challenging economy!
We have known the Chief Executive, Richard Handler, for a very long time and hold him in very high regard. We believe that he and his colleagues will continue to enrich their shareholders.
Read the full text at www.leucadia.com
