Thanks to a quick tip from an enterprising reader, and speedy clarification from Wells Capital Management, MFWire.com was able to determine that the Wells Fargo Advantage Asia Pacific Fund is not dead.

It is merely being restructured in order to handle the move of its manager to Singapore.

MFWire.com first learned of the boo boo in Friday's Stork and Reaper column thanks to a tip from David Snowball, a professor at Augustana College who also runs the website MutualFundObserver.com.

In a Sept. 4, filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Wells had declared that "Effective immediately, the Wells Fargo Advantage Asia Pacific Fund is no longer offered in this Prospectus or Statement of Additional Information."

Upon further clarification from Wells, the filing concerns the portfolio management of two Wells funds, the Advantage Asia Pacific Fund and the Wells Fargo Advantage Emerging Markets Equity Income Fund, is being transferred from Wells Capital Management to Wells Capital Management Singapore, "a separately identifiable department of Wells Fargo Bank, N.A."

According to Wells spokesman John Roehm, this signifies a technical restructuring of the sub-advisory contracts related to these two funds in response to portfolio manager Anthony Cragg, who has managed the Asia Pacific Fund, and its predecessor, since 1993, moving to Singapore.

The investment process, management team and fees of the two funds remain the same, according to Roehm. The restructuring merely reflects Cragg's move to Singapore.

Our thanks to speedy help from Snowball and Roehm for clearing up the matter and encourage all our readers to alert us when they see things on MFWire.com that don't make sense.

 

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