Wealth advisor sues CIBC for $18.7-million following his termination

Darren Luck, an advisor in Windsor, Ont., is suing Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce for $18.7-million following his messy exit from the firm at which he built his $350-million book of business.

In a statement of claim filed with the Ontario Superior Court of Justice, Mr. Luck alleges his suspension and ultimate termination for cause by CIBC earlier this year were part of a “calculated plan to subvert his book of business, ruin his reputation and throw his licence in limbo.”

Mr. Luck, a former senior wealth advisor with CIBC Wood Gundy, is seeking $7.1-million for fees and deferred stock payments he would have earned during a 36-month reasonable notice period, plus a further $10.6-million for the loss of value in his book of business and $1-million in bad faith and punitive damages related to the manner of his dismissal. He joined Wellington-Altus Private Wealth Inc. earlier this year.

According to Mr. Luck’s claim, CIBC had been looking for a way to force him out long before leaping on “innocuous conduct” involving the use of a personal e-mail address.

He also alleges CIBC interfered with the transfer of his Canadian Investment Regulatory Organization (CIRO) licence by including the “meritless” for-cause termination on its F1 form to the regulator, clearing the way for the bank to distribute Mr. Luck’s clients among competing advisors in the CIBC office where he worked.

By the time CIRO had unconditionally reinstated his licence, 16 weeks had passed and “the damage was done,” Mr. Luck’s claim reads.

In a statement sent to The Globe by e-mail, CIBC spokesperson Stephanie Marcus said the company was unable to comment as the matter was before the courts, but that “we will defend ourselves fully.”

In a statement of defence filed with the court, CIBC World Markets Inc. (CIBC WMI) characterizes Mr. Luck’s just-cause firing as the culmination of a six-year period of “repeated and escalating” misconduct, during which he was coached or disciplined for “three separate confidentiality breaches, repeated inappropriate political commentary through CIBC-affiliated accounts and unprofessional workplace communications.”

Leading up to Mr. Luck’s termination, the bank alleges he demonstrated a “blatant disregard” for CIBC policies and ultimately concluded he was “unmanageable.”

The firm also denies any interference with Mr. Luck’s licence, claiming it followed CIRO’s guidelines in its F1 submission regarding his departure.

In any case, the firm disputes Mr. Luck’s claim for damages related to his book of business, claiming his role as an investment advisor was to serve a group of the firm’s clients, for whom he “had no proprietary interest or goodwill.”

None of the allegations in either document have been proven in court.

Toronto employment lawyer Howard Levitt, who is acting for Mr. Luck, said the episode has left his client feeling “frustrated, enraged, outraged and disappointed.”

“He thinks the way he’s been treated is reprehensible,” Mr. Levitt says, adding that Mr. Luck joined Wellington-Altus without taking many of his former clients.

Even considering the cumulative disciplinary issues, the bank has fallen way short of establishing cause, according to Mr. Levitt.

“Is what he did so egregious as to suggest he’s ungovernable? It’s all pretty trivial stuff,” he says.

Since starting his career with Midland Walwyn Inc. in 1991, Mr. Luck has featured in prestigious industry rankings, including appearances on The Globe and Mail’s Canada’s Top Wealth Advisors: Best in Province ranking in 2022.

In his statement of claim, Mr. Luck attributes much of his success to the “Income Accelerator” investment strategy he adopted in the aftermath of the 2008 global financial crisis, which he communicated to clients in a personalized client statement he called “Wealth Tracks.”

Since 2009, Mr. Luck says his assets under management ballooned from $100-million to $350-million at the time of his firing. In 2025, Mr. Luck generated around $2.3-million in fee-based revenue from his 80-basis-point advisory fee, which was shared equally with the bank under a 50-50 fee-splitting agreement.

However, Mr. Luck’s claim says his strategy – which focused on keeping client fees low, only promoted higher-fee in-house products “very selectively” and outperformed CIBC’s average investment fund “dramatically” – did not go down well at the bank.

“[...] CIBC was not content as [it] wanted a greater share of those earnings. It had previously taken issue with Mr. Luck’s approach, which prioritized his clients rather than CIBC’s bottom line,” he alleges in the document. “Rather than appreciating Mr. Luck’s incredible performance as one of its best investment advisors, CIBC started treating him as a competitor.”

Mr. Luck’s claim alleges CIBC found its opportunity to act in January after his IT clerk sent some of his Wealth Tracks marketing material to Mr. Luck’s personal e-mail address. Mr. Luck’s claim says there was no confidential information in the e-mail, but after the e-mail was flagged, he was suspended on Jan. 24 pending an investigation.

In the following days, Mr. Luck alleges his team was dismantled, leaving nobody to serve his clients. Meanwhile, he alleges clients were told he was on administrative leave, “suggesting some serious ethical impropriety on Mr. Luck’s part, to motivate these clients to move to [different] CIBC advisors” before Mr. Luck’s termination on Feb. 2.

CIBC WMI denies Mr. Luck’s account. In its telling, the timeline for Mr. Luck’s termination started in 2020, when he first received coaching after sending confidential client information from his CIBC e-mail address to a personal e-mail address.

The bank says he received further coaching early during the COVID-19 pandemic after allowing clients to visit him in person at the office at a time when the bank had closed the Windsor branch to the public.

In the summer of 2024, Mr. Luck ran into trouble over an e-mail he forwarded from his CIBC e-mail address to a client and another employee containing disparaging comments about then-U.S. President Joe Biden and his family. Shortly after, CIBC WMI says a district manager instructed Mr. Luck to cease all political commentary and delete a comment on a LinkedIn post about the Liberal government’s commitment to welcome Gazan refugees to Canada, in which Mr. Luck wrote, “We cannot stand for this. Soon Trudeau will be gone living on one of Aga Khans islands and we will be stuck with an entire population of terrists [sic].”

According to the firm, Mr. Luck received his first formal written warning in early 2025 after it found he had continued to make comments and communications endorsing political views, in breach of its code of conduct and marketing guidelines.

A second formal warning followed in December, 2025, after the bank discovered Mr. Luck had tried to send a collection of e-mails from his CIBC work account to his personal e-mail account while preparing his response to a separate review of workplace harassment complaints by three fellow CIBC employees. Those complaints regarded Mr. Luck’s alleged yelling, intimidation and condescending remarks.

The statement of defence says the bank found the allegations in the underlying complaints did not amount to harassment. However, CIBC did conclude Mr. Luck’s manner of communication with colleagues was “inappropriate and did not meet the professional standards expected,” earning Mr. Luck his third formal warning just a week before his suspension.

That came, according to the statement of defence, after Mr. Luck’s IT clerk sent three PDFs, including a Wealth Tracks, to Mr. Luck’s personal e-mail address in January, 2026.

The firm claims Mr. Luck’s “Income Accelerator” strategy was actually a standard dividend reinvestment plan and had warned him that it was misleading to market the strategy as his own. One of the PDFs used the “Income Accelerator” marketing, while the others showed the performance of an anonymized investment portfolio.

Although the parties disagree on whether Mr. Luck had permission to use proxy study cases for comparing portfolio returns, CIBC alleges his “ongoing failure to acknowledge the seriousness of his actions” and repeated misconduct were cause for termination.