<p>On Monday, August 4th, 2008, shareholders filed a lawsuit on behalf of a class of all persons who purchased shares of the Evergreen Ultra Short Opportunities Fund in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts against in the fourth- largest U.S. bank Wachovia Corp.’s Evergreen Ultra Short Opportunities Fund over false and misleading statements.</p> <p> </p>
<p>The stockholders accuse Wachovia, two of its affiliates and two group executives follow lawsuits against other financial firms, including Fidelity Investments, State Street and Charles Schwab of “incorrectly” valuing the now-defunct fund in order to artificially inflate its share price and sell them upon materially false and misleading statements between August 17, 2007 until June 18, 2008. The fund, which invested in asset and mortgage-backed securities, as well as other short-duration instruments, was liquidated in June because its net asset value had dropped about 20 % in 2008. Evergreen announced in June that the fund’s shareholders will be paid $7.48 per share cash. According to the complaint “As shareholders redeemed their shares, the selling shareholders were overpaid, depleting the fund’s reserves and harming the plaintiffs,” and the shareholders alleged that “Plaintiffs purchased at an inflated price and were also damaged by the fund’s failure to properly redeem the shares of the fund investors at a price representing the correct net asset value.” The plaintiffs accuse that fund’s prospectus highlighted the safe nature of the investments, while it actually invested in risky, illiquid securities and thus “These statements were materially false or misleading because the fund, in fact, employed a strategy of investing in highly risky securities that were illiquid or otherwise became difficult to value,” so the complaint.</p>