Jefferies Enters into Alliance with BlueStar Indexes for Distribution of Financial Commentary on Israel's Capital Markets

Jefferies LLC today announced that it has entered into an alliance with BlueStar Indexes in Israel. Under the agreement, Jefferies will distribute to its global base of institutional and wealth management clients co-branded BlueStar market commentary on the Israeli capital markets and provide access to the benchmark BlueStar Indexes for Israeli equities and bonds. The initial co-branded report will be distributed in early August and monthly thereafter.

BlueStar Indexes is a leading provider of market analysis and investment solutions for the Israeli capital markets, including data and insights on the Israeli equity market and a family of benchmarks that track Israeli companies listed worldwide. BlueStar's insights provide a unique global perspective on Israel's economy, its equity and fixed income markets, and the key sectors driving investment performance in the Israeli market.

"This arrangement with BlueStar, a thought leader on the Israel capital markets, will provide Jefferies' clients with insights on Israel's economic outlook, macroeconomic policies and performance of the stock market," commented Peter Forlenza, Global Head of Equities at Jefferies. "The distribution of such market intelligence and access to Indexes will be very helpful to our global institutional and wealth management clients seeking exposure to a broadly-defined universe of Israeli technology companies and related investment products."

"BlueStar is thrilled to partner with Jefferies in disseminating our unique Israel market intelligence, indexes and data to Jefferies' vast investor client base across the U.S., Europe and Asia," said Steven Schoenfeld, founder and chief investment officer of BlueStar Indexes. "Furthermore, we believe that our flagship BIGI® and TA-BIGITech® Israel Equity benchmarks – already tracked by two US-listed ETFs and five index funds in Israel – will be valuable tools for Jefferies clients worldwide, and will help clearly define the Israeli Technology sector.'

"Jefferies has a significant and growing business in Israel across multiple product and business lines. We are excited to leverage the focus and capabilities of the strong team at BlueStar to help us continue to develop our strategic initiatives in Israel by providing our investors thoughtful insight into this unique, dynamic and expanding market," added Natti Ginor, Head of Israel Markets at Jefferies.

In other investor offerings from Jefferies, the firm's global equity research effort consists of more than 120 publishing analysts covering over 2,000 stocks from research centers in Frankfurt, London, Hong Kong, Mumbai, Singapore, Tokyo, Boston, Houston, Nashville, New York and San Francisco. The firm's global coverage includes Economics & Strategy, Business Services, Consumer, Energy, Financial Services, Insurance, Healthcare, Industrials, Internet and Interactive Entertainment, Maritime, Media, Metals & Mining, MLPs, REITs, Technology, Telecommunications, Travel & Leisure and Utilities. Through co-branded research agreements in Asia, Jefferies has also formed alliances with leading firms in Australia, Indonesia, South Korea, Malaysia, The Philippines, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam to broaden the firm's equity research offering to its global client base. These alliances now include an additional 100+ analysts covering more than 700 companies in the Asia Pacific region.

To learn more about Jefferies equity research capabilities or to receive the firm's research, please contact your Jefferies representative.

About Jefferies

Jefferies, the world's only independent full-service global investment banking firm focused on serving clients for over 50 years, is a leader in providing insight, expertise and execution to investors, companies and governments. Our firm provides a full range of investment banking, sales, trading, research and strategy across the spectrum of equities, fixed income and foreign exchange, as well as wealth management, in the Americas, Europe and Asia. Jefferies Group LLC is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Leucadia National Corporation LUK, a diversified holding company.

About BlueStar

BlueStar Indexes is a research-focused financial firm that specializes in the Israeli capital markets. BlueStar's mission is to develop investment strategies that provide global institutional and retail investors efficient access to the full range of Israeli asset classes. BlueStar's flagship products are the BlueStar Israel Global Index® (BIGI®), a benchmark designed for broad, deep and complete coverage of Israeli companies, providing balanced sector exposure to Israel's dynamic economy and the TASE-BlueStar Israel Global Technology Index™ (TA-BIGITech®) which tracks more than 70 Israeli tech stocks listed worldwide.. The NYSE-listed ISRA Israel ETF and two TASE-listed ETNs sponsored by Psagot track BIGI®. TA-The BlueStar TA-BIGITech® Israel Technology ETF ITEQ and two Israeli-registered index products from KSM/Excellence fund tracking TA-BIGITech®.

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