About Mr. Christopher Harold
Mr. Christopher Harold Tovar built his academic foundation across three universities and three disciplines. He earned a B.A. in Area Studies, Russian and History from Duke University in 1986. He returned to the classroom for a J.D. at the University of Michigan, awarded in 1993. He later completed an M.A. in History at the University of Texas at Austin in 1996.
His early professional years mixed finance and law. He worked as a registered representative at Morgan Stanley Dean Witter in 1999 and at CUNA Mutual Group in 2001. By 2002 he was practicing law at Shepherd, Smith, Edwards & Kantas, L.L.P. That period exposed him to the regulatory and transactional sides of financial services and set up a career that would cross both legal and compliance roles.
The mid-2000s brought a sequence of in-house and contract posts. In 2007 he served as general counsel and chief compliance officer for Investment Professionals, Inc., and also worked as a contract lawyer with Greer Herz & Adams, L.L.P. He moved into firm leadership in 2010, taking partnership roles that year with Hertz Schram, P.C. and serving as managing partner of Tovar & Cline, LP. He later held a counsel position at Oppenheimer & Co. in 2013 and was vice president in the legal department at Cambridge Investment Research, Inc. in 2015.
In 2016 he opened his own practice, the Law Offices of Christopher H. Tovar, PLLC. His background combines securities industry experience as a registered representative with years of legal work that includes compliance oversight, in-house counsel responsibilities, and private-practice litigation and counseling. He has practiced across several jurisdictions and is admitted to the bars of Texas, Florida, Michigan, Illinois and New York.
Colleagues and clients see a practitioner who understands both the business pressures of financial firms and the technical demands of securities regulation. He has worked on compliance programs, regulatory responses and matters affecting broker-dealers and investment advisors, and he represents financial professionals and firms on licensing and enforcement issues. He currently practices through the Law Offices of Christopher H. Tovar, PLLC, where he concentrates on securities compliance, regulatory counseling, and representation of financial professionals.
