Evergreen Investments Taps Mathew Kiselak to Head Muni Group

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The municipal bond team at Evergreen Investments has a new leader. The Charlotte-based asset management firm has promoted Mathew Kiselak - a veteran with more than 20 years of municipal bond experience - to head of the municipal bond group effective immediately, the firm announced yesterday.

Kiselak, who has been with Evergreen since 2000, was a director and senior portfolio manager of three national and one state-specific municipal bond funds and several municipal money market funds and also was responsible for overseeing the municipal money market group.

In his new role, he will now serve as lead portfolio manager on all internally managed municipal money market and municipal bond mutual funds, providing strategic oversight of research, security selection, and trading for those funds, according to the release.

He began his career in 1987, and was previously a senior portfolio manager for the former Nations Funds family offered by Bank of America from 1991 to 2000. He received a bachelor's degree in economics from Pace University.

The reorganization also includes the appointment of four additional portfolio managers - Dennis Derby, Ladson Hart, Charles Jeanne, and James Randazzo - that were named to co-managers of a combination of municipal money market and long-term mutual fund products offered by the firm. A spokeswoman could not comment on any departures that might have taken place as a result of the reorganization.

Randazzo and Hart will serve as co-managers of the Evergreen Municipal Money Market Fund, Evergreen Institutional Municipal Money Market Fund, Evergreen New Jersey Municipal Money Market Fund, Evergreen New York Municipal Money Market Fund, Evergreen California Municipal Money Market Fund, and the Evergreen Pennsylvania Municipal Money Market Fund.

Randazzo, who has been with the firm for eight years, will also serve as co-manager of the Evergreen Short-Intermediate Municipal Bond Fund. He was previously in charge of several municipal money market funds.

Hart has been with the firm for nearly 10 years and most recently managed the group's municipal money market fund assets.

Meanwhile, Derby, an analyst in the municipal group who has been with Evergreen since 1995, will serve as co-manager of Evergreen High Income Municipal Bond Fund. Previously, he was responsible for research and analysis of high-yield municipal bonds and for monitoring credit quality of bonds held in several municipal bond funds.

Jeanne, a senior portfolio manager who has been with the firm since 1989 and was previously in charge of several state-specific funds, will assume responsibility as co-manager of Evergreen California Municipal Bond Fund and Evergreen North Carolina Municipal Bond Fund, while continuing to serve as a portfolio manager of Evergreen Pennsylvania Municipal Bond Fund.

The reorganization of the firm's municipal bond group was prompted by a need to leverage the strength of the existing municipal bond team in order to continue to provide high-quality, tax-advantaged solutions to clients, according to Karen Watson, executive managing director of Evergreen's Portfolio Solutions and Investment Strategy Group.

"These appointments support Evergreen's ongoing effort to broaden the depth of management for key investment capabilities and facilitate a team-based approach to support our goal of delivering consistent, long-term investment results, and best-in-class asset management," Watson said.

Besides its portfolio managers, the firm has 11 analysts on its credit research team, which continues to be led by Ken Anderson and Jill Richman.

Evergreen services more than four million individual and institutional investors through a broad-range of investment products, and as of June 30, had more than $245 billion in assets under management, the firm said in press release.

Evergreen Investments is the brand name under which Wachovia Corp. conducts its investment management business.

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