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Ex-Microsoft employee sues Merrill Lynch over bad advice
By Aaron Siegel
INVESTMENT NEWS

What's worse than receiving bad tech support? Poor financial advice.

Law firm Klayman & Toskes, P.A. said that it is suing Merrill Lynch and other fellow firms for giving bad investment advice to a former Microsoft employee, who lost $1 million from his company stock option investments.

Merrill Lynch recommended that the employee borrow money to buy Microsoft shares under the technology company's stock option program, which resulted in the employee losing money.

"We have had many of these cases and most of them have not been tried, as they resulted in confidential settlements. I believe the industry feels that they have lots of exposure. The brokerage firms advised people to take positions on leverage," said Lawrence L. Klayman, senior partner at Klayman & Toskes, P.A. "It has been going on for a long time as a result of the tech fall out."

The firm said that the case is currently sitting before NASD.