In what could be a sign of internal dysfunction between J.P. Morgan Advisors and the firm’s Private Bank, a high-flier San Francisco financial advisor wooed to the firm a year ago filed a complaint in court yesterday asking for a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction against the Private Bank pending arbitration, court documents said.  

Advisor Gwen Campbell, who brought $1.1 billion in assets to J.P. Morgan’s advisory group in Oct 2020, requested that the Private Bank be prohibited from soliciting, calling or meeting with her clients unless they were also Private Bank clients prior to her joining the firm; offering products or services to joint clients that the Private Bank did not already offer prior to her joining the firm; transferring client assets from Campbell’s care without her knowledge and client consent; disparaging Campbell when speaking to their joint clients, and interfering with her ability to service her clients by denying her a reasonable work-from-home accommodation, according to the filing.

J.P. Morgan’s attorneys did not return a call for comment by press time.

The 48-page complaint seemed to offer insight into how the relationship between the Private Bank division and the advisory division works, and not necessarily to the advantage of top-producing advisors who join the firm.

“Unbeknownst to Campbell at the time she agreed to join the firm, J.P. Morgan has a history of hiring advisors with significant books of business, only for the Private Bank to attempt to poach their most high-profile and high-net-worth clients and move their assets to the Private Bank,” the complaint said. “Recently, Campbell was called by another leading female JPMA financial advisor, who told her of the rampant pattern of poaching financial advisors’ clients, referring to herself as ‘the [involuntary] cold-calling arm’ of the Private Bank.”

Campbell began her career in 1993 at Goldman Sachs, according to BrokerCheck. In 2004, she moved to UBS and then to Merrill Lynch in 2008, where she stayed until 2020. She appeared on two Forbes lists that year: America’s Top Women Advisors and Forbes Best-In-State Wealth Advisors. Other accolades include Barron’s list of Top 100 Women Financial Advisors and the Financial Times list of Top 400 Financial Advisors in America, the complaint said.

According to the complaint, the negotiation between Campbell and the advisory group took the better part of a year as they worked out the specifics of how she would bring her clients and another $270 million in client loans from Merrill Lynch, including what aspects of those relationships would remain hers and hers alone, and what she would share with other units within J.P. Morgan.

For example, Campbell had been active at Merrill Lynch offering full service to her clients and brought in new business for initial public offerings, corporate commercial loans, airplane loans, currency and treasury management and other types of lending and asset management, the complaint said, adding that compensation had reflected this.

During the negotiation with J.P. Morgan, “Campbell sought explicit assurances from senior management…that the other divisions within the firm, particularly the Private Bank, would not compete for the client relationships she had invested so much time and effort in building,” the complaint said.

In addition, Campbell, who is immunocompromised and make this transition during the COVID-19 pandemic, asked for and received support for her to work from home, including an office setup that would give her 24/7 access to client accounts from her home office, the complaint said.

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