market folly

George Soros' hedge fund firm, Soros Fund Management, have just disclosed a 22% ownership stake in oil and gas exploration company, San Leon Energy (LON: SLE). Due to trading on January 6th, the hedge fund recently crossed the London Stock Exchange's threshold that requires them to disclose the position.

It is likely that Soros acquired shares via San Leon's £59.6m placement on December 31st, 2010. In total, the hedge fund now owns 176,928,520 voting rights. Soros has also been involved in another oil & gas play as we detailed last month as well. There seems to be a common theme here and it will be interesting to watch for potential further investments. In the past, Soros had been a large owner of Petrobras (PBR), Brazil's state-owned oil play.

Per Google Finance, San Leon Energy Plc is "an oil and gas exploration company. The Company is focused on the exploration and production of oil and gas projects in Italy, Poland, Netherlands, United States and Morocco. SLE enjoyed success in acquiring all five permits it applied for in Italy which comprises of three offshore licenses near Sicily and two onshore in the Po Valley. SLE has worked with ONHYM in Morocco to explore the available and massive oil shale opportunities. The Company’s projects include Talisman Energy, Baltic Basin, Permian Basin South, Permian Basin North, Tarfaya Oil Shale Project, Zag and Tarfaya Licences, and Foum Draa & Sidi Moussa. The Company’s wholly owned subsidiaries consists of San Leon (Morocco) Limited, San Leon (USA) Limited, San Leon (Netherlands) Limited, San Leon Energy Srl, San Leon Services Limited, Gold Point Energy Corp., San Leon Energy USA Inc, San Leon (Poland) SP. Zoo, and Vabush Energy SP. Zoo. In 2009, the Company acquired Gold Point Energy (GPE). "

Be sure to scroll through our coverage of hedge fund activity in UK markets for more.