Catenaa, Sunday, August 02, 2026- Investors in Jefferies Financial Group’s Point Bonita Capital started asking for all their money back last year when it emerged that the fund’s biggest exposure was to collapsing First Brands Group.
They had just one payment to go when the fund was thrown back into the spotlight.
Jefferies is now reviewing its exposure to Radiant World, a little-known company that’s rapidly risen to become one of the world’s largest iron ore traders, Bloomberg News reported.
The exposure is down from its peak and is now less than $300 million, the report said.
The review comes as Bloomberg News reported that Vitol Group and Cargill Inc. are among major firms that have stopped trading with Radiant World amid concerns about invalid invoices and other documents that it provided to its banks.
Radiant World has denied the allegations and said its trading relationships are uninterrupted.
As Jefferies in recent months slowly wound down what was once a $3 billion fund boasting an unblemished record of no down months, payments from Radiant World had begun to slow.
The last payment Point Bonita received from Radiant World was about three weeks ago, the report said.
When Point Bonita executives investigated, they discovered discrepancies in some of the paperwork underpinning its financing, Bloomberg previously reported.
The saga is the latest reminder of the potential travails of trade finance, a sector that has been hit by numerous blow-ups in recent years.
For Jefferies, it risks another black eye as the firm is still fighting multiple lawsuits after its bets on First Brands and water-vending machine business Water Station unraveled amid allegations of fraud at both firms.
“We take this situation very personally and deeply regret Point Bonita’s involvement in First Brands,” Chief Executive Officer Rich Handler and President Brian Friedman wrote in their annual letter to investors earlier this year. “There clearly are lessons to be learned, even from an idiosyncratic event such as this, and we will continue to adjust and improve our control regime across our firm.”
In April of last year, Point Bonita said its two biggest exposures were to commodity trading giants Glencore and Cargill, according to an investor letter seen by Bloomberg.
In reality, those exposures were invoices of Glencore and Cargill owed to Radiant World that the commodities trader then sold to Point Bonita, Bloomberg previously reported.
It was the same story with First Brands. The fund had told its investors it had exposure to Walmart and AutoZone, when it was really invoices of those companies owed to First Brands that the company then sold to Point Bonita.
In that case, it was First Brands that would get paid by clients and was supposed to pass that money on to Point Bonita, until it didn’t.
Since the First Brands blowup, Jefferies has spent months trying to move past the fallout.
As part of that, the firm has been seeking to reposition its broader asset management business and reduce the capital that it’s allocated to certain funds after announcing a deal last year to buy a 50% stake in Hildene Holding.
