New Fixed-Income Trading Platform In Store for Evergreen Investments

- Data warehouse gearing up for consolidated view for senior management,- New accounting platform will be outsourced to State Street to gain efficiency,- Enhancing pre-trade decision process will help portfolio managers make better decisions

Evergreen Investments

George Batejan

Chief Information Officer

Evergreen Investments
30 Dan Road
Canton, MA 02021

SIZE OF FIRM:
$312.2 billion in assets under management as of March 31, 2007.

PREVIOUS POSITIONS:
CIO and EVP, Oppenheimer Funds; Director of Global Operations and Systems and SVP, American International Underwriters, a foreign P&C division of AIG; 18 years at Chase Manhattan.

EDUCATION:
B.S. in physics and M.S. in industrial engineering, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

WHO WAS YOUR MENTOR?
My most significant mentor was Jim Zeigon. We first met when I was at Chase in a group called Trade Products. He was an inspirational leader -- one of those people who was charismatic and visionary, and who could stand in front of an audience and energize and motivate. He helped me develop from someone who managed individual contributors to someone who managed managers.

WHO INFLUENCED YOU THE MOST IN YOUR CAREER?
Evan Greenberg, whom I worked for at AIG and who ultimately became its president. Evan was one of the most focused people I ever met. What influenced me the most was the level of authority he granted to managers, which was exceptional.

Someone else was Bridget Macaskill, CEO of Oppenheimer Funds. She created a vision for the company and got everyone behind the vision. She could stand in a group and motivate them, and she constantly sought out diverse opinions from others on the management team. That taught me the value of seeking diverse input, and it broadened me as manager.

WHAT WORK EXPERIENCE HAD THE MOST LASTING IMPRESSION ON YOUR CAREER?
I spent five years [in the mid-80s] in Hong Kong working for Chase, where I was responsible for technology in all of Asia Pacific. It was an extremely interesting professional position in terms of exposing me to a lot of different technologies and financial services products, as well as teaching me a great deal about different cultures and the value of diversity.

What's Next?

The next big thing for Evergreen is to increase our focus and technical support on the pre-trade decision-making process. We need to provide portfolio managers with the tools to make better investments -- not just market data or research repositories, but actual technology, such as artificial intelligence, to help managers make investment decisions.

VITALS

IT Budget:

$37 million to $40 million annually, up from last year.

Key Technology Management:

N/A

Size of Technology Team:

185 full-time staff.

Percent of IT Projects Outsourced:

25 percent of projects are with offshore providers.

Key Technology Partners:

Charles River Management, DST, State Street, Odyssey Financial Technologies, Documentum.

Success Metrics:

We do the basic stuff, such as tracking projects to budgets and schedules. In addition, we do post-project surveys on all projects, regardless of size. They're completed independent of our team to ensure impartiality.

2008 INITIATIVES

Continued rollout of new order management system.

Continued acquisition integration work.

Migration to State Street's post-trade system.

TOP 3 CURRENT PROJECTS

Fixed-Income Trading System

We're replacing a legacy-trading platform with a system from Charles River Development to provide richer functionality and a more integrated and consistent process for executing trades. We'll roll it out to the various fixed-income areas throughout 2007.

Data Warehouse

We started construction of a data warehouse a couple of years ago, initially focused on reference data and a security master file. Now we have consolidated holdings and positions into the platform, and we're looking this year to add transactions as well as aggregate the information that exists there to provide a consolidated view for senior management.

Migration to New Accounting Platform

We signed a deal last year to outsource certain functions of our operations to State Street and leverage its investment in technology, particularly around post-trade processing. The conversion is under way, and we'll continue for another year and a half. This gives us the ability to leverage State Street's technology platforms so we don't have to make a significant investment in ours to keep everything current.