Brown & Brown CEO J Powell Brown is not holding back when it comes to a rival broker and an alleged poaching scheme.
A startup US broker conducted what appears to be a highly coordinated plan "to rip entire teams from its competitors, taking information and customers in the process," he said, in an earnings conference call. He said that action "must be addressed."
A Massachusetts court recently issued a temporary restraining order in Brown & Brown's lawsuit, alleging a nationwide employee poaching scheme by Howden US Services LLC. The restraining order bars the defendants from directly or indirectly soliciting Brown & Brown employees, according to the order from the Suffolk County Superior Court.
Brown & Brown claimed that Howden schemed to woo away employees and clients as a way to build out its US operations. Since Dec. 18, about 200 Brown & Brown employees have joined Howden, which allegedly did not conduct interviews with many of its new hires.
The dispute adds to mounting legal heat around Howden's aggressive US expansion. Aon-affiliated brokers in the US earlier joined the growing list of companies accusing Howden US Services of poaching employees as it works to build out its presence in the country, while Marsh USA leveled similar accusations in a July 2025 suit against Howden and four former Florida-based executives, alleging a coordinated push to accelerate US growth.
The clash with Howden comes as Brown & Brown is itself in the middle of a transformational build-out. The broker recently completed its largest acquisition in history, as it welcomed more than 5,000 staff from Accession Risk Management Group who joined last Aug. 1 after its $9.825 billion acquisition of their company.
The deal vaulted Brown & Brown’s wholesale, specialty and program administration capabilities, and the group has since been integrating those businesses into a unified platform.
For the past year, Brown & Brown said M&A added about $1.8 billion of annual revenue from 43 acquisitions. That scale-up has intensified the battle for experienced producers and specialty teams, even as competitors accuse Howden of crossing legal lines in its own hiring push.
Aside from strong M&A activity, Brown & Brown's Q4 net income attributable to the company also rose to $264 million from $210 million a year ago. Total revenue rose to $1.61 billion from $1.18 billion, a 35.7% increase that was heavily driven by acquisitions.
CEO Brown noted that the performance was in spite of softening property catastrophe rates and economies returning to more normal growth levels. Fourth-quarter organic retail revenue rose 1.1%, following the negative impact of multiple-year policies written in Q4 2024. Some project work was also delayed.
