Truist is pushing back against a competitor it says orchestrated a sweeping raid of its mortgage unit, claiming the move drained the bank of revenue and forced layoffs. Charlotte, North Carolina-based Truist Financial Corp. and its mortgage banking arm resisted a bid for a pretrial win by its former executives’ new employer, arguing that troves of evidence sustain its claims that over 50 employees were illegally poached, costing the bank tens of millions of dollars in losses. Truist argued in the North Carolina Business Court that it’s sufficiently alleged — or at least, facts remain at issue — that former executives Matthew Rocco, Joe Lovell and John Randall were the architects of a scheme to cripple Truist and its real estate finance arm Grandbridge Real Estate Capital LLC. In “weaving its story,” competitor Colliers Mortgage Holdings LLC ignored evidence showing that it directed the trio to share trade secrets and divert employees. “In short, in purporting to outline the material facts, Colliers ignores all evidence of its unlawful collusion with executive defendants to concoct a plan that, in both design and effect, would leave plaintiffs’ mortgage banking business a shell of itself,” according to a partially unsealed version of Truist’s brief filed Monday. Truist sued the three former Grandbridge executives and Colliers in early 2023, alleging a coordinated conspiracy to recruit employees and sabotage the bank’s mortgage business. All three resigned in December 2022 and joined Colliers. According to Truist, the executives were bitter over Colliers’ failed buyout bid for Grandbridge. The trio countersued in May 2024, alleging Truist took control of Grandbridge, seeking to fold it into the larger business, and tried to force them out to avoid severance. That the executives may have made an earlier decision to leave the company is immaterial, as that has no bearing on whether Colliers encouraged them to breach their NDAs or non-solicitations, Truist said. Further, Colliers’ arguments that there’s no evidence to prove it are patently wrong, Truist said, citing an order from the court last year trimming the suit, in which Judge Louis A. Bledsoe III determined Truist’s allegations are sufficient to assert “Colliers’ purposeful conduct,” according to the brief. The facts show that Rocco, Lovell and Randall were motivated by “prodigious financial incentives,” and, at Colliers’ direction, contacted Grandbridge employees about making the jump, Truist said. Colliers’ alternative theory for why all the employees left doesn’t acknowledge the plain evidence, Truist said. For example, much of the executives’ effort to solicit Grandbridge employees were made weeks before Collier posted any jobs, it said. Colliers’ argument for summary judgment also ignored “Project Hornet,” which Truist said is a framework for Colliers, Rocco, Lovell and Randall to recruit everyone at Grandbridge. What Collier pans as “[o]rdinary industry competition” was far from it, as the company had the advantage of working with Grandbridge’s top executives who provided a detailed solicitation roadmap, it said. “No other firm had executive defendants feeding it information and assisting it in violation of their fiduciary duties. No one else constructed a master plan to recruit and hire virtually every person who worked at Grandbridge,” Truist said. Phone and text conversations show the executives preparing names and “walk over funds,” it said.