A longtime broker and financial advisor in San Francisco who is at the center of a massive customer complaint filed last year against UBS and Morgan Stanley scored a muted legal victory on Monday when a sole FINRA arbitrator turned aside Morgan Stanley’s attempt to claw back $2.46 million in recruiting bonus loans, along with attorney’s fees and interest.
Turns out the advisor, Sam Te Su, had already paid back the loans, according to the FINRA arbitration award. “The notes originally at issue and related attorneys’ fees in this case were paid in full before the hearing, so their enforceability was moot before it was time for the arbitrator to issue an award,” according to the award.
But the arbitration puts the spotlight on a current legal entanglement with future implications for the advisor and two of his former employers.
Su has been employed in the financial advice industry for 26 years, and worked at UBS Financial Services in San Francisco from 2008 to 2023 before jumping to Morgan Stanley, according to his BrokerCheck profile.
Su has one disclosure on his BrokerCheck record.
From 2011 to 2023, he allegedly “concentrated in speculative and volatile investments with 80% in one single stock,” according to a summary of the customer 2025 complaint on the advisor’s BrokerCheck profile.
“Claimant counsel alleges the account was not invested per [the client’s] investment objectives and risk tolerance,” according to BrokerCheck. “Counsel further alleges that the [financial advisor] engaged in inappropriate behavior and conduct towards the client.”
The client is alleging damages of $50 million, according to BrokerCheck.
Su did not return a call Tuesday to comment. He is currently registered with Aegis Capital Corp.
While an arbitration award reaching that sum may have been almost an impossibility in the past, FINRA arbitration panels over the past several years have awarded clients tens of millions of dollars in damages.
Stifel Financial Corp., for example, continues to pay massive dollar amounts in settlement to clients who claimed they were wronged by former star broker, Chuck Roberts, and in September agreed to pay customers who recently sued the firm $30 million.
Roberts and his former brokerage firm, Stifel Nicolaus & Co. Inc., for years have been facing scrutiny due to sales of structured products and structured notes, sophisticated but at times volatile investments for clients.
In total, Stifel Nicolaus has paid or is on the hook for more than a staggering $230 million in damages and settlements to former clients of Roberts. Roberts was barred in July 2025 from the securities industry by FINRA.
And UBS Financial Services in the spring was denied its motion to vacate a $92 million arbitration claim it lost last year to clients, closing the firm’s efforts to not pay damages for an industry arbitration award which it deemed unfair.
A group of nine investors in February 2025 were awarded $92.2 million in damages after alleging UBS engaged in a high-risk trading strategy linked to a financial advisor shorting shares of Tesla Inc. (Ticker: TSLA).
A spokesperson for Morgan Stanley declined to comment on the Su arbitration claim and pending complaint. A spokesperson for UBS did not comment by deadline.
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