Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association of America and TIAA-CREF Individual & Institutional Services filed a request on December 17 for a preliminary injunction against a former employee to prevent him from moving clients and their assets to his new firm pending arbitration, according to the court filing. The case is one of several that TIAA has encountered in the last year alleging that clients who departed the giant asset manager violated their non-solicitation agreements.

The former employee, Erold Merko, was a registered wealth management advisor in TIAA’s Southfield, Mich. office beginning in 2012 and had signed a standard non-solicitation agreement that would prohibit him from soliciting TIAA clients for a year should he leave the firm, according to the filing. Merko left TIAA at the end of September to join competitor Raymond James & Associates, according to BrokerCheck.

From 2012 to September 2021, Merko worked closely with clients who had hundreds of millions of dollars in assets with TIAA, the filing said, and since his departure has “has reached out to multiple TIAA clients, including one client relationship on at least four separate occasions in just the last few weeks.”

Neither Merko nor his attorney could be reached by press time.

The filing also detailed complaints from a TIAA client that he had been getting “lots of calls from outside people like Merko” about transferring their assets to Raymond James. Multiple clients had said Merko had sent them Thanksgiving cards with his new business card enclosed.

In discussions with Merko’s attorney about the alleged violations of the non-solicitation agreement, the attorney said another former TIAA employee had been using Merko’s name, and it hadn’t been Merko at all, the filing stated.

However, one of the TIAA clients referenced had met with Merko in person, the filing continued.

The purpose of the injunction would be to “preserve the status quo and prevent irreparable harm to TIAA” until the Finra arbitration hearing, which might take a year or more to reach conclusion.

“Thus far, Defendant has diverted nearly $20 million in client assets to Raymond James. Based on Defendant’s conduct to date, upon information and belief, Defendant intends to continue to violate his obligations, including not to (i) solicit TIAA’s Client Relationships, (ii) misuse TIAA’s Confidential Information, and (iii) defame or disparage TIAA,” the filing said.