Industry

First Union Corp. of Charlotte, N.C., will pay approximately $1.1 billion in stock to purchase EVEREN Capital Corp. of Chicago, the companies announced last week. First Union said the merger will give it national retail distribution.

American International Group (AIG) of New York will acquire a majority stake in John McStay Investment Counsel, an investment management company based in Dallas, for an undisclosed sum. The deal is expected to close in June.

Analytic Investors' four mutual fund portfolios have joined the UAM Funds family. Based in Los Angeles, Analytic Investors is a diversified asset management firm that specializes in quantitative investment techniques that make use of mathematical models. These models include variables that cover multiple aspects of a stock's value. The firm's four portfolios include: Analytic Enhanced Equity, Analytic Defensive Equity, Analytic Master Fixed Income and Analytic Short-Term Government.

State Street Global Advisors of Boston has contracted with First Data Investors Services Group of Westborough, Mass., to run State Street's defined contribution service center in Minneapolis. There, State Street provides telephone service and daily record-keeping for 36 of its 297 defined contribution clients.

The BISYS Group, a mutual fund distribution and administration company based in Little Falls, New Jersey, has acquired EXAMCO, a New Orleans company that trains financial services employees over the Internet.

OppenheimerFunds of New York has acquired Trinity Investment Management Corp., an institutional money manager in Boston with $7.5 billion in assets under management.

The BISYS Group of Little Falls, N.J. has acquired the mutual fund administration business of Bachmann Asset Management Ltd. of Guernsey, Channel Islands. BISYS said it made the acquisition because of its own growing outsourcing business. The acquisition will add to its administrative capabilities.

It might appear that consolidation is occurring in the financial printing world for the same reasons it is in the money management arena. But while consolidation in the money management and mutual fund industry has mainly been done to combine distribution strengths, that is not the case in the financial printing world.

Lowell Asset Management and Pearl Funds Management, both of Melbourne, Australia, will merge. Lowell has $50 million under management, while Pearl has $35 million. The terms of the deal call for Pearl to acquire cash and shares in Lowell. The companies did not reveal the value of the deal or the name of the merged entity.

NEW YORK The value of mergers and acquisitions among investment management companies, including mutual funds, has increased nearly seven-fold in the past eight years and it is expected to continue to grow at a robust pace.