Broker Aon is suing start-up insurance broker Integro, claiming that it pursued an aggressive campaign to poach its employees. Aon is seeking unspecified damages and an injunction preventing its rival from soliciting further staff.

The accusations against Integro are contained in a 61-page complaint, filed by Aon Risk Services in the superior court of Fulton County in Atlanta on Feb. 13. The suit singles out former Aon executives Gary Marchitello and David Finnis, who the broker says conspired to move Aon's entire national property group to Integro.
"Integro, a fledgling insurance brokerage, has essentially built a ready-made national property practice infrastructure by pirating it from Aon," reads the complaint. "It has already used the infrastructure to take away one of Aon's biggest accounts. While Integro's initial focus appears to be on Aon's national property practice, it is clear from Integro's own press releases that Integro has no intention of stopping there."

Both Aon and Integro declined to comment on the suit while litigation is pending.

Since its launch in May last year, Integro has hired seven employees from Aon. It has also hired 24 Marsh employees and eight from Willis. Integro has made no secret of its intention to hire the best broking executives, particularly for its newly-established office in Atlanta. "We intend to build our Atlanta-based operations by attracting the best professionals available," said Roger Egan, chief executive of Integro, in a statement in November last year.

But Aon complains that Integro's hiring spree has stripped it of almost all its national property practice. This began, the firm alleges, with Integro's appointment of Gary Marchitello, Aon's former global property practice leader, as head of its property insurance unit. Marchitello, who spent 16 years at Aon, is accused of plotting to recruit his former team to work for Integro.

One of Marchitello's hires was David Finnis, who joined Integro in November as managing principal of the broker's Atlanta office, having served as director of national property syndication for Aon Georgia. Aon alleges that Finnis and Marchitello then worked together to staff the new division with executives from Aon's New York office and elsewhere.

"In the brief period since Marchitello left Aon, the property division of Atlanta's Aon office has been gutted," says the complaint. "Four out of five employees have left to join Integro." These included former Aon executives Gregory DiPrato and Valerie Schmalzried, who joined in January this year as managing directors of Integro's property practice.

In poaching these executives, Aon says Finnis violated a contract he signed that barred him from soliciting staff from Aon for two years if he left to join a competitor. According to court documents, Marchitello drafted this contract when he was Finnis's boss at Aon. It is unclear whether Marchitello signed a similar contract himself. Calls to his office were not returned.

As well as losing valued employees, Aon also lost one of its biggest accounts when Finnis moved across to Integro: U.S. hospital and health systems operator Hospital Corporation of America.