Lecturer Bios
Patrick Geraghty
Patrick Geraghty is Vice President, Fixed Income, Offerings and Customer Issues Group, in FINRA’s Market Regulation Department. In his current capacity, Mr. Geraghty oversees the fixed income groups, which conduct markup reviews and data-integrity surveillance for corporate, agency, asset-backed and municipal securities. He served in the same role at NASD before its 2007 consolidation with NYSE Member Regulation, which resulted in the formation of FINRA.
Previously, Mr. Geraghty managed the trading practices and customer issues sections, which conduct surveillance for best execution, limit order protection and ITS/CAES trade-throughs, along with providing secondary offering surveillance under Regulation M. Upon joining NASD in 1995, he worked in the real-time surveillance area, handling backing-away complaints, trade-reporting questions and locked/crossed market issues.
Mr. Geraghty also served as an advisor to the NASD Series 55 Committee during the development of the question bank for the exam. He has a bachelor’s degree in economics from Duke University.
Chris Melton, Esq.
Chris Melton is currently Executive Vice President-Legal and Compliance at Coastal Securities, Inc. in Houston. He has served Coastal as Chief Compliance Officer since 2003, and has held his current title since 2006. He has spent his entire career in the securities industry at regional broker dealers focused on fixed income securities. His professional experience includes the areas of institutional sales, public finance and operations as well as compliance. Mr. Melton is past president of the Arkansas Corporate Counsel Association, a past chairman of the FINRA District 6 Committee and is a past member and Treasurer of the Board of Directors of the Bond Dealers of America. He is currently serving a three year term on the FINRA Small Firm Advisory Board (SFAB). His education includes a BSBA in Finance from the University of Arkansas and a J.D. from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. He holds a license to practice law in the State of Arkansas and FINRA Series 7, 63, 24, 27, 53 and 79 securities licenses.
Alexander Sedgwick
Alexander Sedgwick is a market structure analyst in Fixed Income Trading at T. Rowe Price. Mr. Sedgwick is responsible for performing custom research and analysis pertaining to market structure, liquidity, and trade cost/execution analysis across the various fixed income sectors. He is a vice president of T. Rowe Price Associates, Inc. Mr. Sedgwick has 15 years of investment experience. Prior to joining T. Rowe Price in 2014, he spent eight years at MarketAxess Corp. in New York, where he was most recently the Head of Research. Mr. Sedgwick earned a B.A. in economics and politics from Washington & Lee University. He also has earned the Chartered Financial Analyst designation and is a Series 7 and 63 registered representative.
John F. Fechter
John F. Fechter is Managing Director – Head of Taxable Fixed Income Trading, Wells Fargo Advisors LLC. Mr. Fechter has over 30 years of fixed income experience, 28 of which have been with Wells Fargo and predecessor firms. Over the course of his career, he has traded and managed a number of fixed income products, including: Treasury, Agency, Corporate, and Mortgage-Backed Securities. Mr. Fechter is currently the Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Bond Dealers of America (BDA), the Vice-Chairman of the SIFMA Retail Fixed Income Committee and he sits on the Board of Directors of the Security Traders Association of St. Louis, Big Brothers Big Sisters of Eastern Missouri, and the Herman T. Pott Charitable Foundation. In addition, he sits on the Wells Fargo Advisors Best Execution / Trading Oversight Committee, as well as the firm’s Volker Committee. Mr. Fechter holds a BA in
Business Administration from Benedictine College.