Evergreen Funds has quietly added a trio of new funds to its product family. The unit of Wachovia Bank effectively adopted the new offerings when it purchased JL Kaplan Associates in November. Kaplan is an institutional and affluent specialist based in Boston. It also is the subadvisor to three funds in the Undiscovered Managers family.

Now Evergreen Funds has bought those offerings from Undiscovered Managers in an all cash deal. Terms of the sale were not disclosed. The funds covered by the deal were Undiscovered Managers Small Cap Value Fund, Undiscovered Managers Mid Cap Value Fund and Undiscovered Managers Merger & Acquisition Fund.

While Evergreen intends to rebrand the funds, it does not plan to make other changes. "From the fund shareholders' perspective, little is changing. Jim Kaplan and his team will continue to manage the funds in the same manner as they have in the past," explained Mark Hurley Undiscovered Managers chairman and CEO.

"This transaction is a logical next step for Evergreen since we acquired the sub-advisor to these three funds," explained Bill Ennis, president and chief executive officer of Evergreen Investments. "The acquisition unifies all the marketing and distribution strategies for J.L. Kaplan under one roof and enables Evergreen to offer clients the investment management expertise of J.L. Kaplan in a mutual fund format."

This is not the first time Evergreen has "adopted" funds into its family. Most recently it adopted two Grantham, Mayo, Van Otterloo and in 1999 it adopted the Davis High Income Fund. 

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