William A. Franke
Managing Partner
Indigo Partners and Newbridge Latin America

William A. Franke is the managing partner of Indigo Partners and Newbridge Latin America, private equity funds focused on worldwide investments in air transportation and Latin America, respectively. A longtime resident of Arizona, he has offices in Phoenix, Singapore and Buenos Aires.

Mr. Franke was born in Texas and raised in Latin America and has undergraduate and graduate degrees from Stanford University.

During Mr. Franke’s business career, he was the chief executive officer of a Fortune 500 forest products company, Southwest Forest Industries, Inc. (now Smurfit-Stone Container); chairman of the executive committee of a large regional bank, Valley National Bank (now Chase Bank); and chairman of the Circle K Corp., a large U.S. convenience store company, which he restructured through bankruptcy.

From 1993 to 2001, Mr. Franke was chief executive officer of America West Airlines, the eighth largest U.S. airline, which he restructured and repositioned as a low-cost carrier (now U.S. Airways).

Mr. Franke served as the founding chairman of Airplanes Group, Ltd., a $5 billion aircraft finance vehicle created from the aircraft portfolio of GPA Group, the Irish aircraft leasing company, and supported by GE Capital Aviation Services. He was involved in the acquisition of GPA (then renamed AerFi Group) by Texas Pacific Group and served on AerFi’s board of directors until it was divested in 2000 to Debis Airfinance.

As part of an investment group, Mr. Franke was an early investor in Ryanair and was an investor and director of the airline catering company, Gate Gourmet, of Beringer Wine Estates, and of ON Semiconductor. He is currently a director of Alpargatas SAIC (Argentine shoe and textile manufacturer) and chairman of the board of Bristol Group SAIC (Argentine insurance company).

Mr. Franke is chairman of the boards of Tiger Airways (Singapore), Wizz Air Limited (Hungary) and Spirit Airlines (USA) and is commissioner of Mandala Airlines (Indonesia), all Indigo investments.

Mr. Franke has been active in the charitable and civic community and has in the past served, by way of example, as chairman of Phoenix 40, member of the International Board of Barrow Neurological Institute, chairman of COMPAS (arts funding), member of the Dean’s Council, Arizona State University business college, and the Dean’s Circle, Stanford Law School.

The Franke family has been financial supporters of Sojourner Center in Phoenix, the United Way, Stanford (endowed professorship), and established minority student scholarships at Northern Arizona University, Arizona State University, and the University of Arizona, among others.

He is married to Carolyn D. Franke and they have five adult children.