David Berry Wins a Round

The Financial Post has reported:

Ten weeks back, David Berry, former head of preferred-share trading at Scotia Capital, won a victory in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice when Justice Andra Pollak dismissed a so-called partial-summary judgment brought by his former employer. In effect, Justice Pollak determined Berry’s $100-million lawsuit, filed in November 2006, “for constructive dismissal and damages for loss of competitive advantage” should proceed because … Scotia has not met the burden of proving that there is no genuine issue for trial and that partial summary judgment will shorten the trial in any way.”

Because Berry, who was fired from Scotia Capital in June 2005, won that action, Scotiabank became responsible for Berry’s costs, or at least part of them. Recently Scotia received the bill: It is required to pay almost $350,000 –a hefty amount, and, from all reports, a multiple of what Justice Pollak has ordered in the past for similar matters. Scotia has sought leave to appeal the amount.

The David Berry saga has been reported on PrefBlog previously, with the most notable revelation that:

One is Andrew Cumming, who, until 2002, was Berry’s direct supervisor under Jim Mountain in his role as managing director and head of equity-related products at Scotia, and today is a consultant to a money management firm. Last summer, Cumming swore an affidavit in support of Berry’s lawsuit, claiming that he saw nothing wrong with how Berry was ticketing new issue shares.

Cumming is willing to testify that senior executives at Scotia had divulged the bank’s desire to catch Berry in “something like a securities violation so Scotia could use it against him”, to either severely reduce his compensation package or fire him.

Scotia spent, I believe, several million dollars going through Berry’s tickets and managed to come up with some picayune technical breaches. Readers are invited to explain to me why traders employed by banks should agree to deferred compensation for trading profits.

One Response to “David Berry Wins a Round”

  1. […] this matter that I was beginning to think it had been quietly settled! Long time Assiduous Readers will remember that David Berry was Scotia’s pref trader for several years and made them literally hundreds […]

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