Advisor wins $3.2M from Marcum Wealth in gender discrimination, shareholder oppression case

Financial advisor Wendy Eldridge has been granted $3.2 million in compensatory damages from her former employer Marcum Wealth, two years after she accused the Cleveland-based RIA of shareholder oppression and gender discrimination. 

Eldridge alleged in her January 2024 complaint filed in Ohio’s Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas that CEO Eric Wulff used “artificial manipulation” of profits and loss-figures during Marcum’s negotiations to sell to the mega-RIA acquirer Hightower. Eldridge was a managing director and Class B minority shareholder in Marcum, which managed $4.3 billion in March 2025 when it announced its sale to a different RIA aggregator firm, Wealth Enhancement. 

The financial advisor worked at Marcum from 2014 to 2023 before being hired by fellow Cleveland-based RIA Carnegie Investment Counsel as a retirement plan advisor in July 2024. 

Eldridge also alleged in her complaint that as the only woman among roughly a dozen partners at Marcum Wealth, she was subjected to unequal compensation practices, exclusion from equity and financial decision-making, and a pattern of misogynistic treatment that she characterizes as systemic gender discrimination and shareholder oppression within the firm.

This week, a judge in the Cuyahoga County Court awarded $3,282,546 to Eldridge to be paid by Marcum Wealth, LLC, Marcum LLP, and Skoda Minotti Holdings, LLC, a shareholder in Marcum. The payments carry interest accruing at a rate of 7.00% per annum from the date of the ruling. 

Natalie Davis, an attorney for The Haber Legal Group, represented Eldridge and shared the following statement with InvestmentNews. 

“My colleagues Richard Haber, Lindsey Self, and I presented the jury with a plethora of evidence supported by witness testimony that the Defendants retaliated against Ms. Eldridge after she complained of [being] gender discriminated, and breached fiduciary duties owed to Wendy as a member. The jury agreed and entered a verdict for Ms. Eldridge on her claims of retaliation, aiding and abetting retaliation, and breach of fiduciary duty.”

In addition to Wulff, Marcum’s managing directors Christopher Bart and Steven Brett were named in Eldridge’s original complaint. All three of Wulff, Bart, and Brett are employed by Wealth Enhancement as senior vice president financial advisors, according to the company’s website. 

"We are not a party to the litigation and have no further comment,” a spokesperson for Wealth Enhancement told InvestmentNews. Wealth Enhancement’s total client assets exceed $146.5 billion.

“Wendy Eldridge has fought for two and a half years to hold Marcum Wealth, Marcum LLP, and Skoda Minotti Holdings LLC accountable after her former partners fired her and pushed her out of the company,” said The Haber Legal Group. “The jury awarded just over $3.2 million in compensatory damages to Ms. Eldridge. This is the right outcome. While the impact of what Marcum did to my client will never completely fade, Wendy is thrilled with this result and can now, finally, move forward.”