The Evergreen Funds name disappeared today as The Wells Fargo Advantage Funds completed the final step in their intergration and rebranding. The fund company's latest merger news, entitled, "Wells Fargo Advantage and Evergreen Funds Shareholders Approve All Reorganization Proposals", says, "On July 6, 2010, a significant milestone was met when shareholders of the Evergreen New York Municipal Money Market Fund approved a reorganization proposal for the Fund as a Wells Fargo Advantage Fund.... The mergers and reorganizations for the money market and fixed-income funds are expected to occur after the close of business on July 9, 2010."
As we quoted in Crane Data's Jan. 14, 2010 News, "Merger Approved for Wells Fargo Advantage, Evergreen Fund Families", "Wells Fargo Funds Management, LLC, the advisor to the Wells Fargo Advantage Funds, and its affiliate Evergreen Investment Management Company, LLC, the advisor to the Evergreen Funds, have announced plans to streamline and strengthen their mutual fund product offerings. The plans include a series of fund mergers, reorganizations, and liquidations which, following approval by fund shareholders, will result in a Wells Fargo Advantage Funds family offering 128 mutual funds ... representing what we believe to be the best investment management talent from both firms." (See Evergreen press release.)
The new "Proposed Fund Lineup," which should be reflected in tonight's rate files and in tomorrow's edition of our Money Fund Intelligence Daily, eliminates all the Evergreen taxable money funds (31 are tracked by our Money Fund Intelligence, merging these assets into existing Wells Fargo Advantage (22 currently) funds. It also remanes a number of the Evergreen Tax-Free money funds (we list 20 in MFI) and merges most of Wells' Tax-Exempt lineup (10) into newly renamed WFA funds.
Among the taxable fund changes: Evergreen Prime Cash Mgmt and Evergreen Institutional MM (share classes included AD, I, IN, IS and P) are merged into Wells Fargo Adv Heritage; Evergreen Money Market Fund merged into Wells Fargo Adv Overland Ex Swp; Evergreen US Govt MMF and Evergreen Institutional US Govt merged into Wells Fargo Adv Govt MM; Evergreen Treasury MMF I and Evergreen Institutional Treas merged into Wells Fargo Adv Trs Plus; and Evergreen Inst 100% Treasury merged into Wells Fargo 100% Treas MM. Wells Fargo Adv Cash Inv, Wells Fargo Adv MMF and Wells Fargo Adv Prm Inv MM remain unaffected by the fund mergers.
Among tax-exempt funds: Evergreen CA Muni MMF merged into Wells Fargo Adv CA T-F; Evergreen Institutional Muni was renamed to WFA Municipal Cash Management Money Market; Wells Fargo Adv Muni MM merged into Evergreen Municipal Money Mkt; Evergreen NJ Muni MMF, Evergreen NY Muni MMF, and Evergreen PA Muni MMF were renamed as WFA Funds; and Wells Fargo Adv MN T-F and Wells Fargo Adv Nat T-F were unaffected by the changes.
Wells Fargo currently ranks 8th among the 82 managers of money market funds tracked by Crane Data with $143.2 billion in assets as of June 30, 2010. It ranks below 7th-largest complex Schwab's $154.9 billion but above No. 9 Goldman Sachs with $137.0 billion. (Note that Wells Capital's David Sylvester will be presenting on "Merging Money Fund Investment Teams" at the upcoming Crane's Money Fund Symposium.)
