Evergreen Closes Envision Funds

Evergreen Investments of Boston, Wachovia Corp.'s asset management arm, announced Thursday that it has closed its family of fund of funds.

The Evergreen Envision Funds "never garnered assets," according to Laura Fay, a spokeswoman for Evergreen.

The three funds — the Evergreen Envision Growth Fund, the Evergreen Envision Growth and Income Fund, and the Evergreen Envision Income Fund — were launched in 2003 and accumulated $89 million of assets.

The funds "were not going to let us pass on economies of scale with such a small amount of assets," Ms. Fay said.

Evergreen also announced that on Oct. 1 it will reopen two of its funds — the Evergreen Special Value Fund and the Evergreen VA Special Values Fund — to new accounts. Since April 8, 2005, the sale of shares of these funds to new accounts in the funds has been restricted.

Ms. Fay said that the company decided to reopen the mutual funds as part of its ongoing review of its fund lineup. With interest in small-cap funds continuing to grow, the timing seemed right, she said.

Both funds are managed by lead portfolio manager Jim Tringas. They seek to provide capital growth by investing in common stocks of undervalued small-cap U.S. companies.

As of Aug. 31 the Evergreen Special Values Fund had $1.5 billion of assets and the Evergreen VA Special Values Fund had $98 million.

Evergreen had $245 billion in assets under management as of June 30.

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