In Brief: Lincoln Subsidiary To Trim Fund Roster

PHILADELPHIA - Delaware Investments has announced plans to liquidate three of its open-end retail mutual funds and merge 11 others. The funds to be liquidated are Delaware Global Equity, Delaware Global Bond, and Delaware New Pacific.

Shareholders will be asked to approve the merging of seven single-state municipal bond funds - for Iowa, Kansas, North Dakota, New Mexico, Wisconsin, New Jersey, and Montana - into the Delaware Tax-Free USA Fund.

They will also be asked to approve the merging of Delaware U.S. Government Securities Fund into the Delaware American Government Bond Fund, the Delaware Tax-Efficient Equity Fund and the Delaware Blue Chip Fund into the Delaware Devon Fund, and the Delaware Overseas Equity Fund into the Delaware International Equity Fund.

The company said Monday that the funds to be merged never attracted enough assets to achieve strong economies of scale.

The mergers and liquidations would be done in the next several months and would reduce Delaware Investments' fund roster to 49. Delaware Investments, a subsidiary of the insurance company Lincoln Financial Group, had $87.5 billion of assets under management as of March 31.

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