Ex-Evergreen exec settles insider trading charges

BOSTON (Reuters) - Charles Marquardt, a former executive at Wells Fargo's Evergreen Investment Management Co, settled charges of insider trading and agreed to pay about $40,000 without admitting or denying guilt.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said on Wednesday that Marquardt improperly benefited after he traded on information that one of the firm's mutual funds would restate its value.

The case was brought by the SEC's Boston office and comes less than one year after Evergreen agreed in June 2009 to pay $40 million to settle charges that it had overvalued the holdings of its Evergreen Ultra Short Opportunities Fund.

It also comes at a time regulators are probing possible insider trading at a number of hedge funds.

"We are committed to pursuing insider trading wherever it occurs," David Bergers, the head of the SEC's Boston office said. "When mutual fund insiders abuse their positions of trust and trade on inside information, we will hold them accountable."

Regulators said that Marquardt learned on June 11, 2008, that the fund might soon reduce the value it had assigned to some of its mortgage-backed securities holdings.

The following day Marquardt redeemed all of his Ultra Fund shares and avoided losses of $4,803. He also prompted family members to get out of the fund, saving them $14,304 in potential losses.

Eight days after Marquardt had learned about the plans to revalue the fund, the company announced that the portfolio would be liquidated.

(Reporting by Svea Herbst-Bayliss; Editing by Phil Berlowitz)