Frederick

Defendant challenges the trial court’s denial of its petition to compel arbitration of plaintiff shareholder’s derivative action. We conclude the arbitration clause in the agreement between the corporation and defendant is broad enough to include this dispute, and that the agreement to arbitrate applies to the shareholder’s derivative action. We reverse the court’s order denying arbitration.

Factual and Procedural Summary

En Pointe Technologies, Inc., is a business-to-business e-commerce provider of information technology services. Plaintiff Kenneth L. Frederick is a shareholder of En Pointe. In that capacity, he brought this shareholder derivative suit, alleging that between September 1, 1999, and April 13, 2000, certain directors and officers of En Pointe, in conjunction with others, engaged in “a classic ‘pump and dump’ scheme to artificially inflate En Pointe’s stock price to enable the insiders of En Pointe to pocket millions in unlawful insider trading proceeds.” Named defendants also included First Union Securities, Inc. (First Union or FUSI), a securities brokerage which served as a market maker in En Pointe securities; its senior vice-president; Hampton-Porter…