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(This post is part of our series on tracking hedge fund portfolios. If you're unfamiliar with tracking investments they disclose via SEC filings, check out our series preface on hedge fund filings.)

Next up is RBS Partners, the parent company of Eddie Lampert's hedge fund ESL Investments. Prior to forming ESL, Lampert worked with Robert Rubin at Goldman Sachs' risk arbitrage department. Lampert graduated from Yale where he was a member of the skull and bones secret society, as well as Phi Beta Kappa. He runs highly concentrated portfolios and his focus has long been on the retail sector, most notably through his ownership of Sears Holdings (SHLD). He has graced Forbes' billionaire list but was also one of the top hedge fund losers in 2008. In terms of recent investment activity, we saw that Lampert bought AutoNation (AN) shares and his Sears Holdings purchased Bill Ackman's stake in Sears Canada. Our coverage of RBS also includes Lampert's 2010 annual letter.

The positions listed below were their long equity, note, and options holdings as of March 31st, 2010 as filed with the SEC. All holdings are common stock unless otherwise denoted:


Brand New Positions
n/a


Increased Positions
n/a


Reduced Positions
Wells Fargo (WFC): Reduced position by 62.7%
SLM (SLM): Reduced by 62.1%
Acxiom (ACXM): Reduced by 60.1%
Genworth Financial (GNW): Reduced by 7.7%
Sears Holdings (SHLD): Reduced by 7%
Capital One (COF): Reduced by 4.91%
AutoZone (AZO): Reduced by 4.33%
AutoNation (AN): Reduced by 3.33%


Positions They Sold Out of Completely
Bank of America (BAC)


Eddie Lampert's Entire Portfolio (by percentage of assets reported on 13F filing)

1. Sears Holdings (SHLD): 54.27%

2. AutoZone (AZO): 27.21%

3. AutoNation (AN): 11.36%

4. Capital One (COF): 3.09%

5. CIT Group (CIT): 1.44%

6. Genworth Financial (GNW): 1.21%

7. Citigroup (C): 1.03%

8. Acxiom (ACXM): 0.15%

9. Wells Fargo (WFC): 0.14%

10. SLM (SLM): 0.11%

Lampert obviously runs a highly concentrated portfolio so there's not a lot to cover in terms of changes. We want to quickly point out that while it *appears* as if Lampert was trimming positions in Sears, AutoNation, and AutoZone, that's not the case. As we detailed previously, Lampert was distributing these shares to some of his different investment vehicles as well as to investors in his funds.

Be advised that since this filing he has actually bought AN shares which we detailed in April. In terms of selling, Lampert actually sold over 60% of his stakes in Acxiom, SLM Corp, and Wells Fargo. He also sold entirely out of his small stake in Bank of America (BAC). Other than that, there's not a whole lot to update you on.

Assets reported on RBS Partners' 13F filing were $12.2 billion this quarter. Data from the SEC is aggregated and sorted automatically by Alphaclone, our source for hedge fund tracking, replicating, and performance backtesting (Market Folly readers can receive a special free 30 day trial). Remember that these filings are not representative of the hedge fund's entire base of AUM.

This post is part of our daily hedge fund portfolio tracking series. We've already detailed activity from numerous managers so click the links below to be taken to the respective portfolio updates: Seth Klarman's Baupost Group, Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway, Stephen Mandel's Lone Pine Capital, and Bill Ackman's Pershing Square, David Einhorn's Greenlight Capital. Be sure to check back daily for new hedge fund updates.