Six months ago, the lender Monroe Capital announced publicly that it had fired one of its employees for stealing confidential information to set up a rival business.
Now, the firm has quietly dropped those accusations.
Monroe Capital said in a statement on Thursday that it would drop a lawsuit against the former employee, Warren Woo, and would keep him as an investor.
It is a quiet end to one of the stranger spats between a lender and one of its employees. In June, Monroe Capital accused Mr. Woo — a former deal maker at UBS whom the firm hired in 2011 to lead its nascent Los Angeles office — of forwarding 300 emails from his work account to another account at Breakaway Capital, his family office.
The reason, according to Monroe Capital’s suit, was that Mr. Woo intended to set up a competing firm. Among the evidence cited in the legal action was that Mr. Woo regularly deleted those emails from the sent folder in his work account and told at least one potential client to send all future communications to the Breakaway Capital email address.
Yet on Thursday, Monroe Capital appeared to wave away its previous accusations.
“Upon further investigation, it is clear that Mr. Woo’s actions were not improper,” Ted Koenig, the lender’s chief executive, said in an emailed statement. “We are pleased to have reached a mutually satisfactory settlement agreement with Mr. Woo.”
In a public statement, Mr. Woo said, “I am pleased with the settlement and with the acknowledgment that my actions were in no way improper.”
Both sides noted that Mr. Woo would remain an investor in Monroe Capital’s main fund.