1st Union Evergreen Veteran Jumps to Connecticut FirmTo Help Launch Its

First Union Corp.'s Evergreen Keystone Funds division recently lost a veteran portfolio manager, the second high-profile departure in three months.

Edmund H. Nicklin Jr.-a 15-year veteran of the Evergreen Funds, which First Union acquired in 1994-has joined Westport Asset Management Inc. in Connecticut. He is helping to launch its first mutual funds.

Mr. Nicklin, 50, managed the Evergreen Growth and Income fund and its predecessor, the Evergreen Value Timing fund, for more than 10 years. In a telephone interview, Mr. Nicklin said he took early retirement last month to become a principal at Westport.

This summer Evergreen Keystone lost its chief investment officer for equities, Warren Isabelle, who left to start his own firm. Unlike Mr. Nicklin, he was a newcomer to the company, having worked there just four months.

There is a tendency among senior people in the asset management area to branch out on their own, noted Nancy Miller, director of client services at Mark Elzweig Co., a New York executive recruiter.

"A lot of people in investment management or marketing get to a point in their firms where they feel they have nowhere to go," she said. Whether the firm is closely held or publicly traded, there may be limits to the amount of equity they can get, she explained.

For his part, Mr. Nicklin said, "The opportunity to be an owner as opposed to an employee was irresistible." His investment is in the form of "sweat equity" rather than in the injection of upfront capital, he said.

At Westport, Mr. Nicklin will help launch two value-oriented equity funds set to debut by yearend.

The funds are the Westport Smallcap Fund, to be jointly managed by Mr. Nicklin and Andrew Knuth, a principal at the firm, and the Westport Fund, which Mr. Nicklin will manage alone. That fund "will follow the same type of investment style that I developed and used on the Evergreen Growth and Income Fund," said Mr. Nicklin.

It is too early to say how big the funds will be, he said, noting that Westport just filed registration statements with the Securities and Exchange Commission last week.

Mr. Nicklin's duties have been taken over by Evergreen Funds founder Stephen Lieber and Gary Buesser, said an Evergreen Keystone spokesman.

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