Financial services firm Raymond James has won a legal battle over breach of restrictive covenants in the High Court.

A lawyer acting for the defendants said the case was important for all breach of covenant cases.

Financial advisers Towry sued Raymond James for breach of covenants, misuse of information and alleged conspiracy to induce breach of contract in 2009 after seven staff left Edward Jones, a Towry acquisition, to join Raymond James.

Towry claimed that the seven staff had breached their covenants by soliciting Edward Jones clients to join Raymond James.

Law firm Faegre Baker Daniels, acting for Raymond James, argued that the clients had chosen to move and that covenants had not been broken because there was no restriction on ‘dealing’ with clients in the Edward Jones contracts.

Justice Cox ruled this week that the defendants were innocent of all charges and awarded costs to them.

Faegre Baker Daniels employment partner Alex Denny said: “This is a fantastic and well-deserved result for Raymond James and the advisors and an important decision from a wider legal perspective. 

“It highlights the importance of knowing what post-termination restrictions apply to potential new recruits and taking time to ensure that they are not breached. The fact that Raymond James and the advisors had consistently taken and followed legal advice was described by the judge as being a ‘striking feature’ of the case and a major factor in the claims being dismissed in their entirety.”

The Greek insurer selected Clerity’s UniKix Batch Processing Environment (BPE) and Veryant’s vCOBOL software to move all legacy COBOL-based batch applications from IBM z/OS on the mainframe to Linux on IBM System z.

Interamerican is redeveloping its online IBM CICS workloads on the mainframe as Java Web-based applications, using UniKix to address batch/JCL requirements, and vCOBOL to support migrated COBOL programs in a similar way to the z/OS environment, until everything will be redeveloped in Java.

The company will be deploying UniKix BPE and vCOBOL on mainframe Integrated Facility for Linux (IFL) processors in production, including more than two terabytes of sequential, VSAM and IBM DB2 data.

Interamerican CTO Nikos Katsaros said since the firm wanted to focus mostly on the redevelopment plans and the move to an open computing environment was for a platform that would help insurer achieve strategic goals with the least disruption of existing everyday processes.The project is expected to begin by end-February 2012.

Sure, the employer picks up part of the tab but employers are also passing more of the cost to employees than ever before.

Here are a couple examples of when a group plan may not be the best option:

• The group plan is considered a mini-med health plan. Mini-med plans are typically offered by restaurants and to part-time workers but there are a lot of exclusions in the plan and they will only coverage a percentage of health costs.
• Deductibles on high deductible plans continue to get more expensive. At some point, certain deductibles are no longer affordable to consumers depending on their budget. F

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Officials with the Property Casualty Insurers Association of America (PCI) announced this week they intend to push for the overhaul of no-fault auto insurance systems in several states this year and to fight in others against proposed increases in labor rates for auto body repair.

The association, which includes more than 1,000 member companies nationwide, released a list of issues this week on which it plans to lobby state lawmakers, including no-fault changes, proposals that would allow the state to set hourly rates for auto body repair and mechanical work on insured vehicles, and restrictions on the use of consumer credit histories in determining premiums.

“PCI is committed to advancing a pro-consumer agenda that supports healthy, competitive insurance markets across the nation,” Paul Blume, senior vice president of state government relations for PCI, said in a news release.

PCI is one of many insurer organizations pushing for legislators to make changes to no-fault systems in a handful of states. Acc

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Although most Americans believe that parents should financially support their children through college and in an emergency, they do not believe in providing financial assistance in all situations, according to a MetLife survey.

The survey of baby boomers (born between 1946 and 1964), Gen X adults (1965–1976) and Gen Y adults (1977–1990) found that 44% of survey respondents say they would feel a “strong or absolute” responsibility to help an adult child with a financial setback not of their own making.

Yet only 11% feel obligated to help when the situation results from poor spending habits, the survey found.

Exactly 7% said they feel a “strong or absolute” responsibility to contribute to the down payment on a house for their adult child.

The survey indicated that 70% of boomers said enjoying retirement takes precedence over leaving an inheritance, compared to 64% of Gen X and 57% of Gen Y respondents.

“Americans have a strong desire to help their families financially, but their generosity is not unbounded,” said Sandra Timmermann, director of the MetLife Mature Market Institute, in a statement. “While the rese

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The current economic climate is also driving thousands of employed people to consider making the leap into self employment.

With this in mind, the accountancy body has provided some tips for would-be entrepreneurs.

Business start-up tips

Here are some key things to consider before starting up, based on original tips penned by Clive Lewis, its Head of Enterprise:

1. Research the Market – make sure you find out if there is a market for your products of services.

2. B

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With more people getting body art, theres a lot that can go wrong. What happens when a tattoo leads to an infection, or when a client is unhappy with the result and decides to sue? Is there insurance to protect the artist? What about the client?

If a tattoo artist slips up and inks I love Moom, a client may be able to recover some dough from the artists insurance company. That is, of course, if the artist has liability insurance to begin with.

The insurance issue is arising more often as the popularity of tattoos climbs.

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Sterling Insurance is set to open a Manchester office by the end of March.

Sterling is opening the office to increase the insurer’s presence in the north. The insurer described Manchester as the “gateway to the northern market” in a statement.

The insurer has appointed the head of the new office but has not announced the details yet.

Sterling director of home and commercial insurance David Sweeney said: “This announcement will undoubtedly result in Sterling forging even closer relationships with our brokers in the north. It is o

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Lawmakers put pressure on insurance companies to offer coverage since some property owners were experiencing large losses in value because of the pesky bugs. Companies now offering the insurance include Aon Risk Solutions of Chicago, Willis North America, and NSM Insurance Group. “You’

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