market folly

Steve Mandel's hedge fund firm Lone Pine Capital have raised their stake in Esprit Holdings (HK:330).  Per Hong Kong Stock Exchange data, the hedge fund bought just over 14 million shares on June 15th and almost 1.4 million shares on June 13th.

These buys come right after the company's CEO and chairman left and shares plunged.  Lone Pine now owns over 14% of the company.  Additionally, Mandel's firm has easily doubled its stake in the company over the past year or so and are the company's largest shareholder.

Also worth highlighting is that Marathon Asset Management is the second largest shareholder with around 7% ownership in Esprit.

Last week we highlighted an interview with Neev Capital's Rahul Sharma who talked about Inditex's Zara brand and Hennes & Mauritz, otherwise known as H&M.  Esprit seems to be hurt by competition by these brands.

For more on this hedge fund, we've detailed Lone Pine's new position in Cooper Companies.

Per Google Finance,  Esprit is "engaged in wholesale and retail distribution and licensing of fashion and lifestyle products designed under its own Esprit brand name. The brand creates women’s, men’s and kids’ collections for all occasions and distributes in over 1,100 directly managed retail stores and over 11,000 controlled-space wholesale point-of-sales internationally. The Company operates with 12 established product lines offering women’s wear, men’s wear, kid’s wear, edc youth, as well as shoes and accessories."

Be sure to also check out our post on why Steve Mandel likes Kohls.