market folly

On Wednesday we took a look at Lone Pine’s holdings in the US and today we are going to follow that up with an update on their UK positions. We last looked at Lone Pine’s UK holdings back in August. Since then, most of the action has been in one direction: Stephen Mandel’s Lone Pine has been selling out of UK companies. There are no new positions and only one increased position to report.

Of course we don’t know why Mandel has been reluctant to make new acquisitions in the UK. However, it is worth remembering that the UK was one of the countries hardest hit by the banking crisis and one of the slowest to recover from recession despite the fact that the Bank of England has been among the most aggressive ‘quantitative easers’. The fact that a savvy hedge fund manager like Mandel is reducing his exposure perhaps does not bode well for UK PLC generally.

The tables below start with the date of the disclosure on the left (in UK format), the amount of shares owned in the middle, and the ownership percentage stake on the right.

Increased positions:

Intertek (LSE: ITRK) provides testing, inspection and safety services to a range of companies involved in consumer goods, building, telecoms, autos, oil, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, mining and agriculture. It also provides trade services to public standards bodies and governments.

Closed Positions: Lone Pine reduced their holdings below 3 percent of outstanding equity in the following companies.

- Autonomy (AU)

- Michael Page (MPI)

Once a hedge fund’s position falls below 3 percent of equity it no longer has to disclose holdings in the UK. One could assume that given their pattern of selling that they have closed the positions entirely, but there's no sure way for us to verify that right now.

Decreased Positions:

Unchanged Positions:

Lone Pine’s percentage position in Ishaan increased in April 09 due to a share buy-back program undertaken by company (not from an additional share purchase).