In a detailed 125‑page judgment, the Court decisively rejected Guy Carpenter’s central allegation that Willis Re had conspired with two senior former Guy Carpenter brokers to unlawfully poach their teams. While the Court identified limited instances of unlawful conduct relating to the improper provision and use of certain information, it was clear that the recruitment of twenty brokers from Guy Carpenter to Willis Re was properly characterised as a “lawful recruitment exercise”.
Crucially, the Court rejected Guy Carpenter’s attempt to obtain sweeping “springboard” and other injunctive relief, finding that there was no basis for further orders restricting Willis Re’s dealings with either employees or clients. Willis Re therefore successfully resisted all ongoing injunctive relief sought against it.
The Court also dismissed the suggestion that Willis Re’s success in attracting a large number of Guy Carpenter employees could only have been achieved through wrongdoing, emphasising that “seeking to recruit a team does not have to be unlawful” and that it “certainly cannot be assumed that the only way in which Willis Re would have been able to recruit those who it did… was by unlawful conduct”. This important clarification provides a timely and authoritative reminder that ambitious recruitment strategies can be lawfully pursued, provided they are carefully planned and mindfully executed.
The case was conducted on an exceptionally expedited timetable, with just over five months between first intimation of the claim and the start of a seventeen‑day trial. Within this compressed timeframe, the litigation raised complex legal and strategic issues across multiple jurisdictions, including overlapping interests between co‑defendants, issues arising out of foreign discovery orders against a third party in the US (under section 1782), and highly sophisticated counterfactual analyses — all of which were ultimately strongly endorsed by the Court.
DWF fielded a team of over 30 specialists, working collaboratively across its employment and commercial litigation practices. The matter was led by partners Nick Dent (Employment) and Richard Twomey (Litigation & Arbitration), supported by a core associate team including Surya Kumaravel, Leila Parsa, Sarah Deloison and Carley Chapman. The team’s close collaboration was underpinned by DWF’s deep London Market experience and strong institutional understanding of the insurance and reinsurance sectors. DWF instructed a barrister team from Littleton Chambers, led by Jonathan Cohen KC.
This outcome underscores DWF’s market‑leading expertise in contentious matters in the insurance sector, combining deep sector knowledge with first‑rate contentious capability. DWF is proud to have supported Willis Re in achieving a decisive result that reinforces lawful competition and talent mobility within the reinsurance market.
DWF has leveraged this expertise to create a fixed-price product aimed specifically at helping businesses prepare for such lawful recruitment in the London Market. Please contact Nick Dent (nick.dent@dwf.law) for more information.
Thank you to Leila Para and Sara Deloison for contributing to this article and this matter.
