As Jefferies heads into its 60th anniversary year, it capped off an extraordinary 2021 with reported investment banking revenues up 84% year on year to a record $4.4 billion.
The results – which were reported on Wednesday (January 12) and broke a few other records for the firm – set the scene for the rest of the Wall Street reporting season, with JPMorgan, Citigroup and Wells Fargo the next banks to report, on Friday.
Goldman Sachs will report next Tuesday, and Bank of America and Morgan Stanley on Wednesday.
Transformation
Jefferies’ sales and trading results were less startling than its primary businesses, with equities rising 15% from 2020 and fixed income falling 29% from an extreme rise in 2020. But all the firm’s investment banking and markets business lines remain materially transformed from the pre-pandemic year of 2019.
Last year’s record advisory revenues of nearly $1.9 billion are about 2.5 times the pre-pandemic level, while equity capital markets revenues have more than quadrupled since then, to a high of $1.6 billion.
Overall investment banking and markets revenues rose 36% year on year, to $6.8
