market folly

With new EU regulations on short selling providing more transparent disclosures, we're continuing our coverage today with hedge fund short positions in France.  If you missed them, we've also posted up hedge fund short positions in the UK as well as hedge fund short positions in Germany.


French Regulatory System

The French disclosure system has been one of the most transparent in Europe in relation to short positions for some time. In many respects the French approach seems to have served as an influence for policy-makers when they were drawing up the new EU Regulation on short selling as it uses the same thresholds and requires the disclosure of shorts across all sectors.  Even so, due to the new EU Regulation we are suddenly seeing new short positions in France that we had not reported before.


Hedge Fund Short Positions in France Revealed

The following percentages represent the amount of a company's shares the hedge fund is short:

AQR Absolute Return Master: Short -1.35% Vallourec, -1.33% Alcatel Lucent, -0.71% Veolia Environnement, -1.08%  

Eton Park: Short -0.56% lliad  

Lone Pine Capital: Short -0.51% Neopost, -0.98% Gemalto, -0.64% Air France-KLM  

Maverick Capital: Short -1.37% Gemalto  

Odey Asset Management: Short –2.23% Alcatel Lucent, -2.76% Peugeot  

Pennant Capital: Short -0.72% Neopost


As you'll note above, a few hedge funds are short Neopost and we've written extensively on the thesis there which you can read at the above link.


For more new hedge fund disclosures, head to our coverage of:

- Hedge fund short positions in the UK

- Hedge fund short positions in Germany

- Hedge fund short positions in the Netherlands