Wachovia Retirement Services Creates Award-Winning Educational Campaign

May 24, 2006

“Toolkit” Wins First Place in 2006 Eddy Awards

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — One of Wachovia Retirement Services’ fully customized education campaigns earned first-place honors in Pensions & Investments’ 2006 Eddy Awards. The highly regarded Eddy Awards recognize sponsors of defined contribution plans that have done a superior job of educating their employees about their retirement plans.

The award-winning campaign, created for National Gypsum, a Charlotte-based building products manufacturer, placed first in the Initial Education category for corporations with 1,000 to 5,000 employees.

“Participant education is a key element of a successful plan, so we offer our clients various education programs, campaigns and tools that help employees prepare for retirement,” said Joe Ready, Senior Vice President and head of Wachovia Retirement Services. “Winning a 2006 Eddy Award for the campaign we designed for National Gypsum validates our strong commitment to participant education and meeting the unique needs of our clients.”

With more than 40 facilities around the country, National Gypsum was faced with the unique challenge of educating field employees about their retirement plan options. Given the geographically dispersed employee base, Wachovia designed an education campaign titled “Build a Better Life with the Right Tools” for National Gypsum.

This “toolkit” was sent to each National Gypsum field supervisor to use when facilitating onsite education meetings with their employees. Each tool kit included an educational video, frequently asked questions, flyers, enrollment kits, plan-at-a-glance handouts, participant decision guides, English and Spanish employee presentations, and other helpful information.

This “meeting in a box” education campaign walked National Gypsum’s field supervisors through the process of educating employees about the company’s defined contribution and defined benefit plans, both of which have Wachovia as its recordkeeping service provider.

“We worked closely with Wachovia to develop the toolkit,” said Nancy Spurlock, Director of Corporate Communications for National Gypsum. “The ‘meeting in a box’ approach gave our plant managers and HR managers the support they needed to present a complex issue with confidence.”

Only 28 plan sponsors were awarded Eddy Awards from a record number of 150 entries.

About National Gypsum
Headquartered in Charlotte, National Gypsum is a leading supplier of wallboard, interior finishing products, and cement board to the construction industry. It has a network of 40 facilities in North America, including its own paper mills and gypsum mines and quarries.

About Wachovia Retirement Services
Wachovia Retirement Services is part of the Retirement and Investment Products Group, a division of Wachovia’s Capital Management Group. Wachovia Retirement Services provides fully bundled defined contribution, defined benefit and nonqualified retirement plans to both small and large companies, unions and municipalities.

In 2005, Wachovia Retirement Services ranked first or second in 11 client satisfaction categories in Boston Research Group’s 2005 Defined Contribution Provider study. Additionally, Wachovia Retirement Services earned 19 Best in Class Awards in PLANSPONSOR magazine’s 2005 Defined Contribution Survey.

More complete information about Wachovia Retirement Services is accessible online at wachovia.com/401k.

About Wachovia Corporation
Charlotte-based Wachovia Corporation (NYSE:WB) is one of the nation’s largest diversified financial services companies, providing 13.4 million household and business relationships with a broad range of banking, asset management, wealth management and corporate and investment banking products and services. Wachovia operates as Wachovia Bank through 3,159 offices in 16 states from Connecticut to Florida and west to Texas, and, until merger integration activity is completed, will continue to be known as Western Financial Bank in California. Two core businesses operate under the Wachovia Securities brand name: retail brokerage in 49 states and in Latin America, and corporate and investment banking in selected industries nationwide. Globally, Wachovia serves clients through more than 40 international offices. Online banking is available at wachovia.com; online brokerage products and services at wachoviasec.com, and investment products and services at evergreeninvestments.com. Wachovia had assets of $541.8 billion, market capitalization of $90.2 billion and stockholders’ equity of $49.8 billion at March 31, 2006.

Contact Information

Damon Ford

Wachovia Corporation

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