Securities Lawyers Blog
The law offices of Gana Weinstein LLP are currently investigating claims related to investor losses surrounding the First Brands Group bankruptcy. First Brands is an automotive-parts conglomerate behind brands like Raybestos, Trico, and Champion filters that filed for Chapter 11 in September 2025. The resulting losses have rippled through Wall Street’s private-credit ecosystem with the fallout has reaching investors including participants in Jefferies Financial Group’s Point Bonita Capital Fund, a fund marketed as a low-volatility trade-finance vehicle. For affected investors, this is more than a disappointing performance report. It raises urgent questions about how Jefferies managed risk, disclosed conflicts, and monitored the integrity of the assets it financed. Our firm is actively investigating these issues and evaluating potential claims.
Court filings show First Brands entered Chapter 11 in the Southern District of Texas listing liabilities exceeding $10 billion and, in some reports, as high as $11.6 billion. The company’s collapse followed months of liquidity stress tied to its supply-chain-finance programs — facilities through which lenders and funds advanced cash against customer receivables. Those programs were supposed to be straightforward: short-term, self-liquidating loans secured by invoices from reputable buyers. Instead, allegations in the news have emerged of duplicate pledging of receivables, overstated collateral, and missing documentation. At least a dozen institutional creditors have surfaced, with roughly $866 million in disputed trade-finance claims. The Justice Department has reportedly opened an inquiry into potential fraud or misrepresentation.
Among the largest creditors is Point Bonita Capital, managed by Leucadia Asset Management, the alternative-asset division of Jefferies Financial Group Inc. In public disclosures, Jefferies confirmed that Point Bonita held about $715 million in First Brands receivables — receivables that may now be severely impaired. Jefferies also acknowledged that several of its affiliated funds — including Apex Credit Partners CLOs — hold smaller amounts (around $48 million) of First Brands term loans. Although Jefferies emphasizes that its own balance-sheet stake in those receivables is roughly $43 million, the majority of the losses will fall on outside limited partners.