A FINRA arbitration panel has dominated that Morgan Stanley should pay greater than $3 million in compensatory damages, legal professional’s charges, curiosity and case bills to plenty of former advisors who say the agency inappropriately withheld deferred compensation funds after they left employment.

The arbitration order is the most recent in a prolonged and sophisticated authorized saga involving the agency’s deferred compensation association and its alleged refusal to pay six-figure advantages to departed advisors.

As detailed in the brand new FINRA arbitration order shared with ThinkAdvisor by an legal professional representing among the former advisors, the quantities of deferred compensation to be paid vary from about $70,000 upward to greater than $600,000, plus substantial attorneys charges and curiosity funds. Morgan Stanley can be ordered to pay to cowl the price of sure listening to charges, member charges and associated administrative bills.

In response to a request for remark concerning the order, a Morgan Stanley spokesperson supplied the next: “Morgan Stanley has lengthy supplied deferred compensation to monetary advisors to reward them for loyalty and good guardianship. This isn’t a retirement plan, as prior arbitration panels have rightly determined, and we predict the panel reached the incorrect consequence. We are going to proceed to aggressively defend towards meritless assaults suggesting in any other case.”