Mercer Global Advisors is sued to two former employees, accusing them of illegal attractive Mercer clients after the duo left to form their RIA.
In a litigation set up this week in the Federal Court of Georgia, Mercer charged Ryan Malec and David Weitz of an “illegal scheme not to worsen Mercer trade secrets and inappropriately sought after” after leaving the firm in 2023 to find unified Atlanta -based investment management.
According to Mercer's complaints and SEC data, Malec and Weitz joined Mercer in 2021 after she won ACG Wealth, an Atlanta -based RIA 1.3 billion dollars. Mercer argued that both advisers signed confidentiality and non-seeking agreements to join Mercer.
In February 2023, the La Mercer duo. However, Mercer accused them of using trade secrets to attract old customers to their new firm.
In April 2023, Mercer revealed that some Mercer customers 'accounts were “disconnected” from the firm by an unknown third party, which means that Mercer employees could no longer manage those clients' accounts.
According to Mercer, after investigating further, the firm learned that almost all the accounts set were for clients that Weitz or Malec had advised. Mercer believes the duo called on their old customers to remove their accounts and unite them in unified (as of Their most recent AdvThe firm has about $ 136 million in managed assets).
Mercer and unified investment management did not return the requests for comment before publication.
In 2023, Mercer filed a lawsuit against ACG property and its founders, Jeffrey T. Shaver and Joseph Young, claiming they violated the property purchase agreement. They also claimed that the duo failed to ensure that the main staff had been kept in motion, “instead apparently taking money from the sale and heading to the Golf Course, especially Capital City Club”, a country -based Atlanta -based club.
Mercer filed in the records From the club last year, in what an ACG founders claimed to be an attempt to publicly “discredit Mr. Shaver and Mr. Young, trying to get information about them, their family, being members of these clubs.”
This issue is currently awaiting trial.