Moore Capital Buys Citigroup, JPMorgan Shares in Quarter

Moore Capital Management LP, the hedge fund run by billionaire Louis Moore Bacon, boosted its stakes in financial firms after buying shares of Citigroup Inc. (C) and JPMorgan Chase & Co. in the third quarter.

The $13.5 billion hedge fund bought 5.3 million shares of Citigroup, making the New York bank its biggest U.S. publicly- listed holding, according to a filing today with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Moore bought 3.8 million shares of JPMorgan in the period ending Sept. 30, after divesting its entire stake in the prior quarter following the bank’s multibillion-dollar trading loss.

Moore joins Lansdowne Partners LP in adding to shares of financial companies during the third quarter. Lansdowne, the biggest European hedge fund focused on stock picking, added a new position in Morgan Stanley and boosted its stake in JPMorgan, according to a regulatory filing today.

Patrick Clifford, a spokesman for New York-based Moore, declined to comment on the filing.

Moore bought 3.4 million shares of American International Group Inc. (AIG), 3.1 million shares in US Bancorp (USB) and 1.97 million shares of Wells Fargo & Co. (WFC), according to the filing. The hedge fund also added 5.2 million shares of Bank of America Corp. (BAC) in the third quarter.

Moore cut as many as 15 investment jobs in September as part of a restructuring, people with knowledge of the matter said at the time. Bacon told clients in August that he planned to return $2 billion, or about 25 percent of his main fund, to investors, saying it may be too big for him to generate returns in line with historic profits as “liquidity and opportunities have become more constrained.”

Moore last quarter added to an exchange-traded fund that tracks emerging markets by buying 2.7 million shares of the iShares MSCI Emerging Markets Index fund, according to the filing. The ETF is the hedge fund’s third-largest holding after JPMorgan. Moore also added 1.8 million shares in Sprott Physical Gold Trust in the quarter.

Moore sold the Utilities Select Sector SPDR Fund, an EFT that tracks electrical power providers and natural gas distributors, according to the filing.

To contact the reporter on this story: Saijel Kishan in New York at skishan@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Christian Baumgaertel at cbaumgaertel@bloomberg.net