JUMPING SHIP? LEAVE THE PASSENGER LIST
Imagine you are a highly successful broker. You work for investment bank A. Bank B calls you up and makes you an offer you can't refuse. There are two snags. You have to start on Monday and you have to bring most of your clients with you. You look at your contract with A. It stipulates three months' notice and it says something about not soliciting A's clients after you leave. Should you do as B asks?
Two recent cases, one in New York and the other in London, seem encouraging. In New York, Citicorp sued four swaps specialists who defected to Bear Stearns taking boxes of information with them (Euromoney February 1986). The judge told Citi not to be so silly--the four had offered to return the boxes and there was some suggestion that Citi was simply trying to make an example of them--so Citi settled. The one in London was more serious (Euromoney January 1986).
There, Bruce Berkowitz and Pascal Besman, two brokers employed by Merrill Lynch, left on November 27 last year to join Shearson Lehman Brothers International. They took with them computer lists of clients' names and addresses, and called up 250 of their 650 former clients on the day they joined.