Wells Fargo (NYSE:WFC) Cutting Back on Funds Offered, Dropping ‘Evergreen Investments’ Brand

After acquiring Wachovia last year, Wells Fargo (NYSE:WFC) inherited a lineup of funds which had a lot of overlap with the funds they offered, and so they’ve decided to cut back on the number of funds they manage and drop them by 49 funds. That will take the funds offered by Wells Fargo from 177 to 128.

Also as part of the restructuring, the bank will drop the “Evergreen Investments” brand from its fund portfolio as well.

The changes will cause more losses in jobs at Wells Fargo, as the asset management group has already shed about 400 jobs from the year before, when 2,100 people worked in the division to the 1,700 working there today. It’s unclear how many job losses will result from the changes, but Wells Fargo asserts it’ll be minimal.

According to company executives, the reason job losses won’t be that significant is because only two money management teams will be completely shut down, with the rest staying on with the company. Another reason is some of the funds being cut were managed by outside help, making direct losses at the company negligible in that regard.

For the dropping of the Evergreen funds brand, citing a plunge in outflows from the funds was the major reason for merging them with other brands at the giant bank.

Per the transformation of the fund family, 27 of the Evergreen funds will be merged into Wells Fargo’s Advantage funds, while a total of 53 funds from both companies will be merged together, while five funds will be completely shut down.

All of this must be approved by the boards of both families of funds before the plan can be executed by the company. At this time there doesn’t seem to be any known opposition to the transformation going forward.

Karla Rabusch, President of Advantage Funds, stated that the changes in the funds should result in lower fees for the majority of shareholders, but that won’t be confirmed until there are more details released over the next several months.