The National Futures Association, a trade organization and regulator for the industry, will replace longtime CEO Dan Roth with another association veteran - Thomas Sexton, NFA's current SVP, General Counsel and Secretary - effective 3/1/17.

Sexton, 53, has been with the NFA since joining it as a lawyer in 1991. He became an assistant general counsel in 1998 and moved into his current role in 2001. He earned bachelor's and law degrees from Notre Dame and an MBA from Loyola. Roth, 67, had held the top post at NFA since 2003. 

The NFA, created in 1982, is a so-called self-regulatory organization that registers, monitors and sometimes disciplines participants in the futures market. It took on similar duties for the swaps industry after passage of the Dodd-Frank Act in 2010. It has about 500 employees and an annual budget of about $90 million.