Chris Charles
Chris Charles is President and Chief Executive Officer of Wulff, Hansen & Co., a San Rafael-based public finance and investment advisory firm established in 1931. He also serves as the firm’s CCO.
Mr. Charles joined the firm in 1979. From 1997-2002 he was the firm’s Executive Vice President, CEO, and COO, and previously served as Manager - Municipal Trading, Director of Equity Research, and in various other capacities. He also oversees the firm’s investment advisory division, Wulff Capital Management, which he formed in 1985 to consolidate and expand the investment advisory services which had been offered by the firm in the decades since its founding.
Mr. Charles served on the FINRA District 1 committee from 2006-2009, again in 2010, on FINRA’s National Advisory Council in 2009, on FINRA's Small Firm Advisory Board for three years from 2012 through 2014 and on the FINRA Fixed Income Committee 2015-2017. He presently serves on FINRA's West Region Committee and on two of FINRA's Professional Qualifications committees. From 2015 through 2021 he also served on the Board of Directors of NSCP, the National Society of Compliance Professionals, where he co-founded NSCP's Municipal Advisor Committee. Mr. Charles is active in the industry, speaking on current topics at forums sponsored by FINRA, the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board (MSRB), and by NSCP and has written for the magazine Practical Compliance and Risk Management.
His satisfaction in his work at Wulff, Hansen stems from the opportunity to provide an organizational infrastructure that makes it possible for his colleagues to focus their energies entirely on using their skills to serve a broad and very diverse group of clients. He believes that truly creative finance is at least as much an art as it is a science and feels fortunate to lead a team of such innovative and talented individuals helping to make California a better place for all.
Professional licenses: SIE (Securities Industry Essentials), Series 7 (General Securities), Series 14 (Compliance Officer), Series 24 (General Securities Principal), Series 50 (Municipal Advisor Representative), Series 52 (Municipal Securities Representative), Series 53 (Municipal Securities Principal), Series 54 (Municipal Advisor Principal), Series 57 (Securities Trader), Series 79 (Investment Banking Representative), and Series 99 (Operations Professional).
