MARYANN BRUCE: THERE’LL BE THE BLUE DEVIL TO PAY IF FIRST UNION’S FUNDS DON’T SHINE

The clock is ticking for Maryann Bruce, the new head of sales for Evergreen Funds, the mutual fund unit of First Union Corp.

She’s got 14 months to bring in $23 billion in assets so that her boss, the Charlotte, N.C., banking company’s chairman, Edward Crutchfield, doesn’t get egg on his face. He’s been boasting about having $100 billion under management in 2000.

Ms. Bruce, 39, a true marketer, isn’t sweating bullets, at least not publicly.

“It’s still a viable goal,” says the president of Evergreen Investment Services. At the very least “we’ll get darn close.”

Ms. Bruce was hired for the position last month, replacing Mike Treske, now overseeing key accounts as global relationship manager.

Ms. Bruce’s hiring fits into a broader effort by First Union to strengthen its mutual fund division. Earlier this year it raided American Century Investments of Kansas City, Mo., for a team of investment managers.

First Union has built its mutual fund business up from $7 billion in 1994 largely through acquisitions -including the Evergreen and Keystone Funds, and the Monitor Funds that came with the purchase of Richmond, Va., brokerage Wheat First Butcher & Singer. Despite the recent swooning of its stock price, First Union isn’t ruling out further purchases, Ms. Bruce says. However, she’s not counting on acquisitions to get her to Mr. Crutchfield’s goal.

Ms. Bruce is hoping to accelerate production by overhauling Evergreen’s internal sales force and by striking alliances with national as well as regional brokerages.

in the catbird seat

First Union is in an enviable position for boosting internal sales too, Ms. Bruce says. Apart from its extensive bank branch network, it can also rely on First Union Securities, which became the nation’s sixth-biggest brokerage earlier this year with the acquisition of Everen Securities in Chicago.

Ms. Bruce says she plans to shift the focus of the 140-strong Evergreen sales force. Currently, its members are generalists, handling multiple tasks. She wants to bulk up the staff by up to 10% and dedicate staff to tasks like account management and wholesaling.

Yet she has little control over what may be her biggest hurdle: mediocre performance. Biased toward small-to-mid-cap value stocks, the Evergreen funds largely have failed to distinguish themselves.

Evergreen Foundation, the largest fund with $3.1 billion in assets, has racked up a 1.75% return through Sept. 30, putting it in the 44th percentile of its balanced fund category, according to Morningstar Inc. in Chicago.

Its longer-term performance is better. It had an average annual return of 13.73% for three years and 17.17% for five years, ranking it in the 16th percentile for three-year performance and 13th for five-year.

The second-largest fund, the Evergreen fund, has $1.9 billion in assets and is in the 44th percentile among aggressive growth funds through Sept. 30. It was up 15.62% for three years and 15.74% over five years, ranking it 43rd and 39th respectively.

“They haven’t had top-performing products in leading categories,” says William White, who oversees the investment products practice for the Spectrem Group, a San Francisco-based consultant. “That’s where they need to get strong.”

A broker with First Union Securities concurs. “They’ve got to get some performance numbers. Their story is tough to tell.”

If performance improves, Ms. Bruce has the skills and experience to hold up her end. She spent 12 years at OppenheimerFunds Inc., where she was the architect of the New York mutual fund company’s bank group. She left there last year to join Allstate Corp. in Northbrook, Ill., where she was president of Allstate Financial Distributors charged with building the insurer’s wholesaling operation.

“She’s got extensive experience in the mutual fund industry as well as experience with financial institutions,” says competitor Mike Vessels, national sales manager for Aim Funds in Houston. “She’s very bright, has high energy, is articulate and she loves to be successful.

“We have side bets on sales and production,” he adds.

Ms. Bruce says she decided to leave Allstate after less than a year because the job proved to be less flexible than she had hoped.

She took the job with the understanding that she could work every other week from a home office in New York, where she lived with her husband, Ron, and two children; however, the travel demands of the job were such that she worked from home only one week.

The job opening at Evergreen could hardly have been more fortuitous. A graduate of Duke University, Ms. Bruce could imagine moving her family to North Carolina.

Another sentimental attachment: She met her husband on an airplane while she was a student and he worked in Raleigh-Durham.

It’s a homecoming of sorts for Ms. Bruce, who still is an avid Duke basketball fan.

“You’re always a Blue Devil,” she says.