Ex-Merrill Sales Manager Awarded Shares of Bank of America Stock by a FINRA Arbitration Panel
From the Desk of Jim Eccleston at Eccleston Law LLC:
A FINRA panel has ordered Merrill Lynch to pay its former sales manager, Robert Bowman, 21,660 shares of Bank of America stock, which today is currently worth $303,240.
Mr. Bowman left Merrill Lynch in 2014 to join Snowden Capital Advisors, an independent advisory firm in New York founded two years earlier by several of his former colleagues. After he left Merrill Lynch, Mr. Bowman filed a claim against the firm alleging that it still owed him deferred compensation in the form of 50,152 of restricted stock units in Bank of America. Moreover, Mr. Bowen argued that although the shares were not vested at the time of his departure, Merrill Lynch breached its contract and in turn would be unjustly enriched if it did not pay him the shares he was originally owed.
This decision is notable because Merrill Lynch and other firms require brokers to sign employment contracts that seek to prohibit them from transferring unvested deferred compensation when they transition to another firm. The panel did not explain its decision but undoubtedly it will have widespread effects.
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