An New York City-based arbitrator has ordered two former employees of the Apollo Global Management LLC to pay a combined $1.15 million in damages after finding that they had misused the public equity giant’s confidential information while seeking to start their own firm.

The strongly worded ruling from JAMS arbitrator Mark E. Segall found that Imran Siddiqui, a former managing director at Apollo, had breached a prior settlement agreement with the company and improperly recruited his associate, Ming Dang, to aid him in starting Caldera Holdings LLC.