Airline Leader Briefing with Indigo Partners Managing Partner, William Franke

Bill Franke is the Managing Partner of Indigo Partners LLC, a private equity fund focused on air transportation investments. The fund currently has major investments in Volaris Airlines (Mexico), Wizz Air (Hungary) and Frontier Airlines (U.S.). During Mr. Franke’s business career he has been the Chief Executive Officer of a Fortune 500 forest products company, which he repositioned strategically, tripled its revenues and achieved record profits before merging it with another company at the industry’s highest per ton valuation; Chairman of the Executive Committee of a large regional bank whose management he restructured; Chief Executive Officer of a large U.S. convenience store company, which he restructured; and, from 1993 to August 2001, Chief Executive Officer of America West Airlines (now American Airlines), which he managed through a bankruptcy into an airline that from 1994 to 2000 had the highest EBITDAR margins of the major U.S. airlines and won two J.D. Power awards for its service. Mr. Franke was Managing Partner of Newbridge Latin America, a private equity fund focused on Latin America, which made investments in Mexico, Brazil, Colombia and Argentina in a variety of businesses including retail, manufacturing and insurance. Newbridge was wound up in 2012 on sale of its last investment. Mr. Franke served as the founding chairman of Airplanes Group, Ltd., a US$5 billion aircraft finance vehicle created from the aircraft portfolio of GPA Group plc, the Irish aircraft leasing company, and supported by GE Capital Aviation Services (GECAS). He was involved in the 1998 acquisition of GPA (then renamed AerFi Group) by Texas Pacific Group and served on AerFi’s board of directors until it was sold in 2000. Also, along with an investment group led by David Bonderman, Mr. Franke was a pre-IPO investor in Ryanair and a founder of Hotwire, the travel internet site. Mr. Franke was the Founding Chairman of Tiger Airways (Singapore), was the Chairman of Spirit Airlines (U.S.), serves as Chairman of Wizz Air Limited (Hungary), is a director of Volaris (Mexico), and is the Chairman of Frontier Airlines (U.S.) In addition, he has served on several public company boards of directors in a variety of industries. Mr. Franke was born in Texas and raised in Latin America. He has undergraduate and graduate degrees from Stanford University and was awarded an honorary Ph.D. from Northern Arizona University, whose business college is named after him.