Wachovia's Evergreen Funds is trimming. The firm revealed yesterday in an SEC filing that it plans to merge 11 of its funds into 10 others. At the same time the firm also revealed that its new closed end fund took in roughly $1 billion during its offering period.

The closed-end Evergreen Income Advantage Fund is the firm's first closed-end fund in roughly two decades, according to an industry source. The high-yield offering is attracting investors seeking higher yields in this low interest environment. The quick growth of the fund means that it has already surpassed Evergreen's opened end version of the product. The High Yield Bond Fund holds just $695 million in assets.

Meanwhile, Charlotte, North Carolina-based Evergreen is merging 10 funds to "eliminate overlap" in its product line-up. Still, not all of the funds are inconsequential. Two of the funds targeted to disappear are merging into larger funds.

Small Cap Value with $636 million of assets will fold into Special Values, which has $411 million in assets. Meanwhile, Evergreen Value ($374 million AUM) will merge into the Equity Income Fund. The latter fund has $670 million in assets.

The other mergers are:

Evergreen Select Balanced Fund ($161 million) into Evergreen Balanced Fund ($994 million)

Evergreen Select Small Cap Growth Fund ($106 million) into Evergreen Growth Fund ($458 million)

Evergreen Tax Strategic Equity Fund ($10 million) into Evergreen Core Equity Fund ($1.5 billion)

Evergreen Offit Mortgage Securities Fund and Evergreen Offit U.S. Government Securities Fund into Evergreen U.S. Government Fund

Evergreen Offit High Yield into Evergreen Select High Yield Bond Fund

Evergreen Offit National Municipal Bond Fund into Evergreen Intermediate Municipal Bond Fund

Evergreen Cash Management Money Market Fund into Evergreen Prime Cash Management Money Market Fund  

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