This is the eighth piece in a series on the bankers who run Wall Street’s largest investment banking franchises. Previous pieces covered Tom Miles at Morgan Stanley, Stephan Feldgoise at Goldman Sachs, Anu Aiyengar at JPMorgan, Andrew Woeber at Barclays, Robert Leitão at Rothschild & Co, Vis Raghavan at Citi, and Ivan Farman at Bank of America. Today’s story is about Rich Handler, chief executive of Jefferies.
At Jefferies’ investor meeting on October 19, Handler told investors the firm “has reached critical mass as a world-class institution.” Management signalled a shift from broad-based senior hiring towards operating leverage, alongside selling merchant banking assets, reshaping asset management and expanding its partnership with Japan’s SMBC. Jefferies does not have a single public head of M&A. Investment banking was presented by Andrea Lee, co-head of global investment banking, and by Raphael Bejarano and John Miller, who both hold the title global head of investment banking. Handler is the person who speaks for the franchise, and the most visible.
Handler has been at the firm since 1990. He runs the firm with president Brian Friedman, who co-signs the results and shareholder letters. At the October meeting he said the firm had built “a broader and more capable Jefferies” and “begun to meaningfully drive operating leverage in our core business.”
Jefferies’ recent league table position
The investor meeting placed Jefferies sixth globally in overall investment banking, fifth in global M&A and sixth in equity capital markets, with 376 investment banking managing directors across offices in 24 countries. In large-cap corporate M&A the firm has risen to eighth from 18th since 2019, and it ranked second in private equity sell-side assignments below $1bn of enterprise value, with a 7.5% share. First-quarter results set records in investment banking advisory and underwriting, with Investment Banking net revenues up 45% on the year earlier. For full-year 2025, Jefferies reported $7.3bn of net revenues and a return on tangible equity of 10.1%, in a year that “disappointed in the first half, but went out like a lion.”
Deals that have moved the franchise
Jefferies has been on a run of sizeable mandates. In 2025 and 2026 it advised on Johnson & Johnson’s $14.6bn acquisition of Intra-Cellular Therapies, AT&T’s $23bn purchase of wireless assets from EchoStar, Eaton’s $10bn acquisition of Boyd’s thermal management division, and James Hardie’s $14bn deal for AZEK. It has also been active in healthcare, including the sale of Apogee Therapeutics to AbbVie and work on Organon and Recordati. In insurance underwriting M&A it ranked first by value in the first half of 2025, driven by Definity’s $2.4bn acquisition of Travelers’ personal and commercial insurance businesses. The firm’s own materials list more than 800 advisory transactions in recent years. These are the deals that have moved it from mid-market specialist toward a more consistent presence on larger transactions.
In his own words: “Jefferies has reached critical mass as a world-class institution.” On the risks of getting there: “There are always challenges of getting critical mass, and we are not immune from any of those.” On First Brands, with Friedman, in the first-quarter results: “Management is disappointed and takes full responsibility for the losses already recognized and that may be absorbed over time in respect of First Brands, all of which are manageable.”
First Brands and the shift in strategy
The First Brands collapse tested that claim. Jefferies’ Point Bonita fund held roughly $715m in receivables tied to the auto-parts supplier. The firm’s own economic exposure was smaller: around $43m through Point Bonita plus a minor interest via Jefferies Finance CLOs. By the first quarter it reported $17m of losses related to Market Financial Solutions and First Brands after compensation and taxes, and said its direct exposure to First Brands was now zero. Handler and Friedman said the losses were manageable and that the reputational impact had been overstated. Morgan Stanley upgraded Jefferies to overweight late last year, arguing that weakness tied to First Brands was overdone and that the SMBC partnership would support further share gains.
After years of adding senior bankers to gain share, management now says it will lean on the scale it has built. That contrasts with the rest of this series, where JPMorgan and Citi are still recruiting senior M&A bankers from rivals. The question is whether the operating leverage Handler described can be delivered while the firm still competes for the larger mandates that have driven its recent league-table gains.
Two questions will determine how the next phase unfolds. Whether Jefferies can hold a top-five M&A ranking while shifting from expansion toward operating leverage. And whether the SMBC partnership, including the Japanese equities joint venture due to start in January 2027, turns Jefferies into a genuine global rival to the bulge brackets.
Author: Tejas Bansal
See Also:
The M&A Summit 2026 to Take Place in Central London on 16 November | Disruption Banking
Who Is Ivan Farman? The Former Wachtell Lawyer Co-Running Bank of America’s M&A Business | Disruption Banking
