Morgan Stanley is taking legal action against three of its former financial advisors based in

Honolulu, saying they took over 1,000 clients and account records when they left to work for Merrill Lynch, according to local press reports.

In a complaint filed this week in the federal court in

Honolulu, Morgan Stanley alleges Carl Choy, Lynne Kinney and Ronald Wo violated employment agreements by soliciting clients and removing confidential records.

Before resigning from Morgan Stanley on 10 October, the three misappropriated confidential and proprietary information and used it to solicit business on behalf of Merrill Lynch, according to the complaint.

They had serviced about 1,200 individual client accounts with combined assets under management of about $900 million, the documents said.