a yearslong highstakes legal drama over advisor recruiting in a small arkansas city ended last month when brokerage firm stephens won an 18 million arbitration case against rival firm benjamin f edwards stephens had accused benjamin f edwards and four advisors who left the company to join its competitor of tortious interference and unjust competition among other alleged misconduct according to an arbitration award issued jan 20 the dispute—an unusual example of a raiding case pitting two brokerages against one another—focused on how benjamin f edwards recruited four of the six financial advisors stephens employed in jonesboro ark according to the arbitration award although stephens won the multiyear case the memphisbased arbitration panel was split two arbitrators sided with stephens while a third dissented from the majority the two arbitrators who found in stephens’ favor wrote that benjamin f edwards’ hiring of these advisors constituted raiding because it created economic harm to stephens represented predatory intent and was done via improper means “there is severe economic harm stephen’s jonesboro branch has remained in business but there are lost profits the lost production of the four fas and sales assistants was well over 50 of annual production” the arbitrators wrote the dissenting member of the arbitration panel wrote that stephen’s claims “were based on unreliable evidence speculation and conjecture” and that the advisors were atwill employees free to seek employment elsewhere benjamin f edwards denied the allegations and said it plans to challenge the decision “we vehemently disagree with the decision of the panel and intend to challenge the award” a company spokeswoman said in a statement “we believe we conducted ourselves properly during the recruiting process and believe this is supported by the strong and wellreasoned dissent of one of the three arbitrators” little rock arkbased stephens was pleased with the win according to chief operating officer curt bradbury “we felt strongly that benjamin f edwards  co’s conduct toward our jonesboro office constituted raiding and ignored accepted standards of recruiting in our industry” bradbury said in a statement he added “raiding violates the most fundamental principles of fair competition in our industry as does a failure to honor one’s contractual obligations” four advisors named in the arbitration case—brian todd erwin timothy garry fitzgerald jeffrey lynn green and malcolm andy peeler—did not respond to a request for comment all four are based in jonesboro a city of 78000 people benjamin f edwards has recruited hundreds of advisors since its founding in st louis in 2008 by benjamin f “tad” edwards iv whose family had founded ag edwards which became part of wells fargo advisors by 2015 benjamin f edwards had more than 50 offices and almost 200 advisors in 2016 the company looked to expand to jonesboro where six other brokerage firms including stephens had operations according to the arbitration award it ultimately succeeded in hiring erwin and peeler from stephens in september 2016 according to brokercheck a public database maintained by industry selfregulator finra two of their coworkers fitzgerald and green followed suit in august 2017 stephens filed its arbitration claim the following month according to the arbitration award the arbitrators separately denied a counterclaim made by benjamin f edwards accusing stephens of breaching the broker protocol an industry agreement that permits advisors switching employers to take basic client contact information with them raiding cases are rare in part because many brokerage firms belong to the broker protocol but the damages awarded can be substantial for example credit suisse won a 9 million raiding case against ubs in 2019 the swiss bank had accused ubs of improperly hiring more than 90 of its advisors after credit suisse announced plans to close its us wealth management business in late 2015 arbitration cases involving raiding claims can take considerable time to litigate the stephens case concluded after 84 hearing sessions which stretched from january 2018 until november 2021 according to the arbitration award total cost for the hearings was 94500 and benjamin f edwards was ordered by two of the three arbitrators to pay the bulk of the cost that’s a lot of litigation says tom lewis an attorney at law firm stevens  lee and who is not affiliated with this case “it tells you the extent of the testimony in the case”