Wilmington Trust sues former HNW team in move to Citi

Wilmington Trust Co., the Delaware bank founded by the du Pont family and being bought by M&T Bank Corp., sued three former company vice presidents who defected to Citigroup Inc., allegedly with proprietary data. The Wilmington, Delaware-based trust firm contends in the suit that Barbara McCollum, Robert Rosenberg and Paul Gordon, each of whom worked in wealth-management, will be using information related to former clients in their new jobs at Citigroup. The three worked on a team “that serviced high net worth clients,” and are familiar with “client revenue, fee projections, investment strategies,” according to a complaint filed today in Delaware Chancery Court in Wilmington. They “engaged in a concerted effort to remove voluminous, important proprietary and confidential information from Wilmington Trust Co. so they could use it at Citi,” the civil lawsuit contends. Wilmington Trust, which expects the buyout to be completed by midyear, is asking a judge for an injunction to stop the three from unfairly using the information, to make them return the data they allegedly took and to pay the bank's legal fees. Mark Costiglio, a spokesman for Citigroup, declined to comment on the lawsuit. Phone calls to the homes of Robert Rosenberg and Paul T. Gordon seeking comment weren't immediately returned. McCollum's phone had been disconnected and she couldn't immediately be located. --Bloomberg News--