Citadel exec sues JPMorgan for $2.3 mil

JPMorgan Chase & Co. was sued for $2.3 million by former executive committee member Patrik Edsparr over an unpaid bonus payment in the latest dispute involving a group of senior managers who left the bank last year.

Edsparr, 43, said in a lawsuit filed this month that JPMorgan’s London unit refused to pay a deferred bonus after he left the bank to work at Citadel Investment Group LLC.

JPMorgan, the second-biggest U.S. bank, last year sued executive search firm IDW Group over the hiring of Edsparr and three other bank executives by Citadel. It also stopped trading with Citadel for a day last year before reaching an agreement with the hedge fund over the departures.

Edsparr resigned in March 2008 to become global fixed- income head and European CEO of Citadel, the Chicago-based hedge-fund firm founded by Kenneth Griffin. At JPMorgan he had been on the executive committee and ran businesses including foreign exchange, securitized products and principal investments.

David Wells, a spokesman for New York-based JPMorgan, declined to comment. Roberto Moruzzi, Edsparr’s lawyer, said he couldn’t immediately comment when contacted by phone yesterday. Edsparr didn’t respond to an e-mail seeking comment.

Edsparr claims that JPMorgan first halved, and then refused to pay an expected $5 million bonus that vested in January 2007 for payment this year.

JPMorgan sent Edsparr a letter in December saying that because of the performance of the business and changes in the level of the London interbank offered rate, or Libor, the payment had been reduced to about $2.3 million, according to the lawsuit.

On March 25, JPMorgan attorneys in New York contacted him saying they planned to pay him nothing due to “an unparticularized allegation of violation of non-solicitation agreements contained in unidentified agreements” with the bank, the filing said.

The case is Edsparr v. JPMorgan, High Court of Justice, Queen’s Bench Division, HQ09X01552.