(Bloomberg) — Investors in Jefferies Financial Group Inc.’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 auto supplier First Brands Group.

Most Read from Bloomberg

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, according to people familiar with the matter. The exposure is down from its peak and is now less than $300 million, said some of the people.

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, according to one of the people familiar with the matter.

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.”

Point Bonita investors could be forgiven if they’re feeling a bit of déjà vu.

In April of last year, Point Bonita said its two biggest exposures were to commodity trading giants Glencore Plc and Cargill Inc., 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 Inc. and AutoZone Inc., 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 blow up, 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 Co.

At its peak, Point Bonita was run by 15 professionals and managed $3 billion — more than a third of which was tied up in receivables it bought from First Brands and Radiant World. Since it announced last October that it would allow investors to begin redeeming, its staff has dwindled to just five people, one of the people familiar with the matter said.

Point Bonita operates under Jefferies’ Leucadia Asset Management division. Founded in 1979, Leucadia was originally a diversified holding company akin to a smaller version of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc., with investments across a variety of businesses, including beef processors, mining companies and auto retail.

In 2012, Jefferies agreed to sell itself to Leucadia, though Handler and Friedman remained the combined company’s top executives. At the time, Leucadia was already Jefferies’ biggest investor, having boosted its holdings in 2011 as the investment bank’s stock slid during Europe’s sovereign-debt crisis.

Leucadia National Corp. changed its name to Jefferies Financial Group Inc. in 2018, when it sold off its meatpacking and auto-dealer businesses. Leucadia has remained the name of the bank’s asset management arm, which provides Jefferies with third-party capital and fee-based revenue.

Over the years, Leucadia entered into strategic partnerships with a string of boutique investment firms, committing capital and providing them with operational support. Leucadia’s investments span public and private markets and the unit managed $65 billion in assets as of the end of February.

Still, the unit has become a regular pain point for Jefferies in recent years.

In 2024, one of its funds — 352 Capital — sued its former portfolio manager, claiming he orchestrated an investment of more than $100 million in Water Station, a suspected Ponzi scheme.

A year later, Jefferies and Leucadia were sparring in court with hedge fund founder George Weiss after his hedge fund empire teetered on insolvency.

Last year brought the First Brands saga. The exposure prompted investor redemption requests, and forced Handler to send a letter to clients to reassure them that everything was under control and that the related losses would not threaten the bank’s financial condition

Leucadia was subsequently sued both by a lender and shareholders for investment losses and for misrepresenting Point Bonita’s risk before First Brands collapsed.

Last year, an analyst questioned Jefferies’ executives as to whether these events — from First Brands to George Weiss’ blowup and the turmoil with Water Station — could still be considered idiosyncratic.

“It troubles us, the coincidence of several of these,” Friedman said at the firm’s investor day in October. “It’s causing us to ask questions. It’s causing us to scrutinize.”

–With assistance from Loukia Gyftopoulou, Jonathan Randles, Jack Farchy and Katherine Chiglinsky.

Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek

©2026 Bloomberg L.P.