Lone Pine Takes a New Position in MSCI

Stephen Mandel's hedge fund firm Lone Pine Capital LLC filed a 13G with the SEC Tuesday after the market close. In the filing, Lone Pine disclosed a 5.5% ownership stake in MSCI Inc (MXB). It now owns 5,476,525 MXB shares and the disclosure was made due to activity on October 1st, 2009. This is a brand new position for the hedge fund as it did not previously own shares back on June 30th, 2009 as per its 13F filing which detailed its portfolio.

In terms of other recent SEC filings from Mandel's hedge fund, we've noted that it filed a 13G on Green Mountain Coffee Roasters (GMCR) and boosted its stake in Vistaprint (VPRT).

Lone Pine is a $7 billion hedge fund and gets its name from fund manager Mandel's days at Dartmouth College where the school has a historical lone pine tree. His fund has returned over 25% annually (leading up to the crisis) since inception in 1997. Last year was rough for the fund though and put a chink in its armor. Overall though, Lone Pine is certainly one fund worth tracking as it seeks out companies trading below their intrinsic value that also have good management teams. To see Lone Pine's positions, check out our coverage of its US portfolio, as well as our post on its UK positions.

Taken from Google Finance,

MSCI Inc is "a provider of investment decision support tools, including indices and portfolio risk and performance analytics for use by institutions in managing equity, fixed income and multi-asset class portfolios. The Company’s principal products are its international equity indices marketed under the MSCI brand and its equity portfolio analytics marketed under the Barra brand. Its products are used in many areas of the investment process, including portfolio construction and optimization, performance benchmarking and attribution, risk management and analysis, index-linked investment product creation, asset allocation, investment manager selection and investment research. The Company’s primary products consist of equity indices, equity portfolio analytics and multi-asset class portfolio analytics."