William Augustus Franke (born April 15, 1937) is an airline investor and a co-founder and Managing Partner of Indigo Partners LLC, a private equity fund focused in air transportation. He has been the President at Franke and Company, Inc. since 1987. Franke has been Chairman of

Wizz Air Wizz Air, legally incorporated as Wizz Air Hungary Ltd. ( hu, Wizz Air Hungary Légiközlekedési Zrt.) is a Hungarian ultra-low-cost carrier with its head office in Budapest, Hungary. The airline serves many cities across Europe, as well as s ...

since 2004, and serves as Chairman of Frontier Airlines. He also serves as the President and Chairman of Bristol Group SA.

Education and early career

Franke graduated from Stanford University with a BA in History in 1959 and an LL.B. in Law in 1961. In his early career he was the CEO of a ''Fortune'' 500 forest products company, Southwest Forest Industries (now Smurfit-Stone Container) and Chairman of

Circle K Circle K Stores, Inc. is a Canadian chain of convenience stores headquartered in Laval, Quebec, Canada. It is owned by the multinational company Couche-Tard. Founded in 1951 in El Paso, Texas, the company filed for bankruptcy protection in ...

, which he restructured through bankruptcy. He was Chairman and CEO of

America West Airlines America West Airlines was a major American airline, founded in 1981, with service commencing in 1983, and having reached US$1 billion in annual revenue in 1989, headquartered in Tempe, Arizona. At the time of its acquisition of US Airways, Americ ...

from 1993 to 2001, Chairman of

Singapore Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, bor ...

-based Tiger Airways from 2004 to 2009, and Chairman of

Spirit Airlines Spirit Airlines Inc. (stylized as spirit) is a major ultra-low-cost U.S. carrier headquartered in Miramar, Florida, in the Miami metropolitan area. Spirit operates scheduled flights throughout the United States, the Caribbean and Latin Americ ...

from July 2006 to August 2013.

Philanthropy

He was awarded an honorary doctorate from Northern Arizona University in 2008 where, following a $25 million donation, The W. A. Franke College of Business was named after him. In 2016 he made a donation of $24 million to the

University of Montana The University of Montana (UM) is a public research university in Missoula, Montana. UM is a flagship institution of the Montana University System and its second largest campus. UM reported 10,962 undergraduate and graduate students in the fa ...

. He has also donated to his alma mater

Stanford Law School Stanford Law School (Stanford Law or SLS) is the law school of Stanford University, a private research university near Palo Alto, California. Established in 1893, it is regarded as one of the most prestigious law schools in the world. Stanford La ...

to create The W. A. Franke Professorship in Law and Business. In 2021, he donated $25 million to the

University of Arizona The University of Arizona (Arizona, U of A, UArizona, or UA) is a public land-grant research university in Tucson, Arizona. Founded in 1885 by the 13th Arizona Territorial Legislature, it was the first university in the Arizona Territory. T ...

to be put towards scholarships, housing stipends, and study abroad programs for honors students; the Honors College was thus renamed the W.A. Franke Honors College.

Education and early career

Philanthropy

References

Further reading