Export to excel issue with illegal XML characters

 We have some report data with & in it and whenever we do the export to excel from Flexmonster grid, we get an error message. Below is sample data and screenshot of error message. Sample data to reproduce issue is below. We tried escaping the data but that didn't work either.
 
^0,^0,^0,^0,^0,^0,^0,^0,^0,SCH L: BEG LOANS TO STKHDRS,-700000,^0
^0,^0,^0,^0,^0,^0,^0,^0,^0,SCH L: BEG MORT PAYABLE>1 YR,-618456,^0
^0,^0,^0,^0,^0,^0,^0,^0,^0,SCH L: BEG MORTG & LOANS,9564000,^0
^0,^0,^0,^0,^0,^0,^0,^0,^0,SCH L: BEG MRTG PAYABLE<1 YR,285000,^0