Lampert fund trims stakes in financials

Date: Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Author: Ross Kerber, Reuters

* Lowers stakes in CIT Group, Citigroup - filing

* No longer lists shares in SLM Corp, Wells Fargo

 Billionaire hedge fund manager Edward Lampert further trimmed stakes he owned in major U.S. financial companies during the second quarter, a securities filing showed on Monday.

As of June 30, Lampert's ESL Investments' RBS Partners fund reduced the stakes it owned in Capital One Financial Corp (COF.N), Citigroup Inc (C.N) and CIT Group Inc (CIT.N), the filing showed, compared with holdings on March 31.

The filings also showed no holdings in two financial companies in which RBS previously listed stakes -- Wells Fargo & Co (WFC.N) and student lender SLM Corp (SLM.N).

ESL tends to take concentrated positions in a few stocks and, in the first quarter, had already trimmed shares in Wells Fargo and Bank of America Corp (BAC.N).

Lampert himself is best-known for putting together retailers Sears Holdings Corp (SHLD.O) and Kmart five years ago. He remains chairman of Sears.

The RBS filing showed it had 3.6 million shares in CIT Group as of June 30, down from 4.5 million shares as of March 31. It had 24.6 million shares of Citigroup, down from 31 million in March. And it had 7.1 million shares of Capital One, down from 9.1 million.

RBS did raise its stake in Genworth Financial Inc (GNW.N) to 9.1 million shares from 8.1 million shares, however.

Large investors such as Lampert are required to report their holdings of U.S.-listed securities at the end of each quarter.

They are not required to show short positions or holdings of other securities such as bonds and over-the-counter derivatives contracts. Investors may also exclude stocks they are trading or have moved to other funds.

The filing also showed lower stakes held by RBS in Sears and two other companies in which ESL is involved, AutoZone Inc (AZO.N) and AutoNation Inc (AN.N), compared with the previous quarter.

Recent regulatory filings show RBS distributed shares of those companies to various general and limited partners during the quarter.