Wachovia Names John Papadopulos President Of The Retirement And Investment Products Group

CHARLOTTE, NC—Wachovia Corporation today announced that it has named John Papadopulos, age 49, President of the Retirement and Investment Products Group (RIPG), one of three businesses within the Capital Management Group. Papadopulos succeeds Robert Reid, who recently was named head of the Real Estate Division within the Corporate and Investment Bank. Papadopulos will report to David Carroll, head of the Capital Management Group, and serve on the division’s operating committee.

“John has had a long career focused on serving the unique needs of his clients, has a strong track record of growing businesses and is very effective at building partnerships across the broader company,” Carroll said. “I am pleased that John will be at the helm of this business. He has a mandate to advance our efforts further into the consumer and institutional markets so that Wachovia will ultimately be the retirement provider of choice.”

Papadopulos has spent the past 12 years working in the firm’s Corporate and Investment Bank, in a series of senior management roles, most recently as managing director within the Financial Institutions Group, leading the investment banking team that covers insurance and banking clients. Prior to this role, Papadopulos served four years as the managing director of Institutional Investor Management. In this position, he served as chief liaison to the top 50 global institutional investors that are trading partners of Wachovia’s Fixed Income and Equity groups. Before joining Wachovia, he served as a managing director at Bankers Trust in New York and at Continental Illinois Bank in Chicago.

In his new role, Papadopulos will oversee the firm’s retirement business, including its retail retirement business, which provides products, including IRA and annuities, to Wachovia’s distribution channels, which include Wachovia Bank and Wachovia Securities; Wachovia Retirement Services, its defined contribution and defined benefit recordkeeping business; and the reinsurance business.

“Retirement—and saving for future needs—is one of the biggest issues affecting Americans today. RIPG is a terrific business at Wachovia, and I am very excited to be working with this team and all its partners to help create solutions for our clients,” added Papadopulos.

Retirement and Investments Products Group
The Retirement and Investment Products Group creates and makes available an array of retirement solutions for retail and institutional clients across the company. It includes the Retail Retirement Group, which is focused on the sales growth of Wachovia’s IRA and annuity products through the bank and brokerage channels. At the end of 2007, with annual sales of $12.5 billion, Wachovia ranked as the number one distributor of annuity products in the United States. Since 2004, Wachovia’s IRA assets under management have grown at a combined annual growth rate of 13 percent and 2007 inflows topped $20 billion. At end of 2007, Wachovia ranked in the top 5 in IRA assets under management in the U.S.1 The business unit also includes Wachovia Retirement Services, which provides recordkeeping, administration, education, investment options and health savings account services to more than 2.2 million plan participants with more than $105 billion in assets in more than 6,600 retirement plans. In 2007, Wachovia was rated as the second best provider for client loyalty in the retirement industry by the annual Boston Research Group survey. The Retirement and Investment Products Group also includes Wachovia’s Life and Annuity Reinsurance operations. The Reinsurance Group is one of the leading U.S. reinsurers of retirement and annuity products, as well as, life surplus relief transactions.