The feud between regional brokerage firm Robert W. Baird and three former employees who left the firm last year has apparently been settled out of court.
Robert W. Baird and the three former Baird portfolio managers (Joel Vrabel, Robert Bowman and Robinson Bosworth III, the founders of Red Granite Advisors) settled their lawsuits against each other last Friday, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
The dispute between Baird, typically a quiet regional brokerage firm (see story, “Not Your Father’s Regional”), and its former employees (Red Granite founders Vrabel, Bowman and Bosworth) began when the three asset managers left Baird in April 2006. Nearly a dozen Baird employees left with them—and nearly $5 billion in client assets walked out the door, too (none of the money has turned up at Red Granite), according to published reports. Baird sued the men in May, alleging that they had taken and used proprietary Baird information to attract clients to their new firm. But in pre-trial discovery, Baird could offer no evidence of such conduct. Red Granite sued Baird CEO Paul Purcell in January for defamation. That suit was also settled.