A star financial advisor for Stifel Financial Corp., Chuck Roberts, who has recently been at the center of a storm of costly legal complaints against the firm, is out of work.
According to his BrokerCheck profile, Roberts, a 35-year industry veteran who has worked at Stifel Nicolaus & Co. Inc. since 2016, is no longer registered at the firm. His last day was Wednesday. The reasons for Roberts’ leaving Stifel are not yet public.
Stifel has paid millions of dollars in damages to former clients of Roberts over the past year. According to Roberts' BrokerCheck report, Stifel is on the hook for more than $166 million in damages, legal fees and settlements in investor complaints involving Roberts.
And the firm faces at least 20 pending investor lawsuits, via FINRA arbitration, per BrokerCheck.
“I don’t know the particulars of this yet, but I would be shocked if Stifel didn’t jettison him, given the amount of damages awarded to clients right now,” said Andrew Stoltmann, a plaintiff’s attorney. “He is about as radioactive as the soil at Chernobyl.”
“Roberts was a successful broker,” Stoltmann said. “Will he set up a one man shop?”
A spokesperson for Stifel Thursday morning confirmed Roberts has left Stifel but did not comment further.
The BrokerCheck report does not give a reason for Roberts’ leaving. It does list dozens of investor complaints and settlements against the firm that Roberts’ clients have lodged against Stifel that involved the broker and a risky investment strategy he used that involved potentially volatile structured notes.
The performance of structured notes is typically tied to an underlying asset, such as a specific stock or an index such as the S&P 500 stock index.
Most notably - and perhaps most damaging - to Roberts was an industry arbitration panel’s decision in March to award clients of Stifel and Roberts $132.5 million in damages and legal fees in a dispute adjudicated under the aegis of FINRA Dispute Resolution Services.
In that investor complaint, David Jannetti and family members in 2023 sued Stifel Nicolaus & Co., the broker-dealer subsidiary of Stifel Financial, claiming at least $5 million in damages related to investments in structured notes, a strategy that has resulted in several previous significant arbitration claims and damages to clients.
The size of the Jannetti award stunned the industry. The arbitrators ordered Stifel Nicolaus to pay Jannetti and family $26.5 million in compensatory damages, $79.5 million in punitive damages, and $26.5 million in attorney’s fees and costs. Awards of punitive damages are rare in FINRA arbitration cases.
Stifel in May in federal court in Miami filed a motion to vacate that award.
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