Evercore Partners To Acquire BoA Fiduciary Services Division

Wendy Spires

1 May 2009

US investment bank Evercore Partners has agreed to buy Bank of America’s Special Fiduciary Services division, a unit which provides investment management and trustee services, as part of the formation of Evercore Trust.

The terms of the deal were not disclosed; BoA's Special Fiduciary Services division has about $12.8 billion in assets under management and administration.

Evercore Trust will provide clients of Evercore Wealth Management with private trust services that include executor, trustee and custodial services."The formation of Evercore Trust Company is a logical extension of our strategy to strengthen our investment management platform, further diversify our revenue mix and incorporate businesses that share our focus on providing independent and objective advice and service to large institutional and high net worth clients," said Roger Altman, chairman and chief executive of Evercore Partners.

Last November, Evercore appointed former US Trust chief executive Jeffrey Maurer as CEO of Evercore Wealth Management. Mr Maurer will be chairman of Evercore Trust, while Charles Wert and Norman Goldberg have been appointed chief executive and chief fiduciary officer respectively.

Evercore Trust will have a total of 29 employees and will be based in New York, with offices in Los Angeles and Washington.

Mr Maurer will manage a team of eight from US Trust parent Bank of America, including executives Christopher Zander and Jay Springer.

In addition to Messrs Zander and Springer, the executives hired by Evercore were John Apruzzese, head of custom equity solutions, head of the New York City trust team Karen Francois and Charlie Ryan, an investment executive.

Three others came from Bank of America's Columbia Management unit: Gary Gildersleeve from fixed income investments; Sandy Panetta, a fixed income portfolio manager and fixed income manager Jim Holihan. All three worked at US Trust before joining Columbia.

As previously reported by WealthBriefing, US Trust, Bank of America Wealth Management, made widespread job cuts across its branch network in March.

In December 2008, Bank of America announced that it would axe 30-35,000 positions over the subsequent three years. These job losses are to due to a combination of a recessionary environment and the acquisition of Merrill Lynch, and affect all lines of business, BoA said.