Founders Information

William L. Rogers
PO Box 101149
 Fort Worth, TX 76185    
 
 

Mr. Rogers is the founder of TexWest, LLC – his principal investment vehicle.

Mr. Rogers was fortunate to participate in the beginning days of leveraged buyouts, family offices, and private equity; and his partnerships were on the leading edge in corporate and realty transactions.  For the last decade, he has turned that expertise to ESG and sustainability investing…in an effort to give back and to leave the world a better place…

Bill is working today to develop a carbon-free, 6500-acre, green energy, and industrial campus on land adjacent to Albuquerque, New Mexico.  The first phase involves a $1.2 billion, 300 MW solar array with 4 X 1 battery storage – with construction having begun January 2023 and finishing May 2024.  The second phase combines “behind the meter” geothermal, solar, and battery carbon-free energy sources for data centers and other high energy demand commercial applications.  A number of states are following this effort and would wish to duplicate the development.     

Returning to his childhood of growing up on a small, eastern North Carolina farm, Mr. Rogers is one of the founders of U.S. Farming Realty Trust [“USFRT”] – currently multiple limited partnerships (totaling $1 billion plus equity) investing in an unleveraged, diversified portfolio of U.S. farmland. Bill grew up on a small family farm in North Carolina, and USFRT’s general partner and its affiliates have been successfully entrenched in a number of agri-business operations since 1871.
Thinking trees, not crops - Mr. Rogers is an investor in entities which have purchased 40,000 acres of timberland and conservation land in the Southeastern U.S. Such entities work to be (I) a good steward of their monies (i.e., Investing unlevered and beating the NCREIF timber index annually), and (II) a good steward of their lands (i.e., Thousands of acres will be preserved from development forever... in conservation easements and wetland mitigation.  As the CEO of the Nature Conservancy recently wrote: "the destruction of forests, it turns out, contributes as much greenhouse gas pollution as all the cars and planes in the world...."

Mr. Rogers was also a founder of The Halifax Group – a small-cap leveraged buyout group founded by himself; his partners of twenty years, David Bonderman (Chairman of the Texas Pacific Group – www.tpg.com) and Tom Barrack (Chairman of Colony Capital); and David Dupree (a former Carlyle partner). While at Halifax, Halifax [www.thehalifaxgroup.com] invested in eighteen corporate transactions, estimated by Mr. Rogers to total over $3 billion in enterprise value. Mr. Rogers served as Chairman of The Halifax Group from its inception in 1999 to January 1,2010 … when he stepped away from Halifax to focus on his personal investments (including his continuing investments with Halifax) and to focus on his future investments in ESG and Asia.

In regard to Asia: Mr. Rogers, together with his partners Keith Tucker, Jeff Tucker, and Tom Delatour, was an initial investor in Century Bridge Capital to focus on "build to sell, middle income, residential real estate" in growing Tier II Chinese cities.  Century Bridge has now invested in more than 20 realty projects totaling more than $1.5 billion in cities like Xian, Dalian, etc.

Mr. Rogers is an avid traveler to New Mexico, has a home is Santa Fe, and is a founder of RSF Land & Cattle, based in New Mexico, which has a number of real estate holdings:

  • RSF and its affiliates have developed 1,000,000 plus square feet of retail and commercial in New Mexico and have other residential and commercial holdings in North Carolina, Texas, and California.
  • RSF is also involved in farming several thousand acres of citrus crops and grapes in California [with its longtime partner, George Bravante], and has developed a state-of-the-art packaging operation for processing harvests for itself and others. The packaging entity is a Sunkist grower/shipper with its product going to all 50 states, and 30% of its product being shipped to Asia and England.
  • Bill and RSF also control the former Henry Ford Plantation [i.e., Vallambrosa] - 8200 acres within the City of Savannah, Georgia.  Vallambrosa is one of the most significant ecological sites on the waters of the East Coast...with over 6 miles of waterfront on the Ogeechee River.  The top portion of the Plantation has municipal water and utilities already to the property ...for a master planned community of up to 4000 building units which will be carefully utilized in a manner to retain the special nature of the land.  The site also has substantial wetland mitigation credits.  Bill may retain the bottom portion of the Plantation as a special sanctuary of forests, estuaries, and world class fishing and hunting.
  • RSF is also a part owner of Greystone Castle [www.greystonecastle.com] – a sporting resort west of Fort Worth. Greystone’s 6000 plus acres of upland hunting, big game hunting, and world class fishing provide the best sporting experiences …; provide luxury resort accommodations …; are in the Barnett Shale energy fields …; and are the basis for a potential second home recreational resort two hours from Dallas.

Bill has been blessed to have been a partner with a number of individuals who are world class in their special areas, e.g.:

  • Mr. Rogers invested in and helped grow Penhall Intl. – the leading supplier of a group of specialty infrastructure services … first in California … and then across the Western U.S. Penhall was quite successfully sold in a “nine- figure transaction” to a leading New York investment group.
  • Mr. Rogers was a founder and director of Cobrek Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (www.cobrek.com). Cobrek created and executed high return, intellectual property strategies within the branded and generic small-molecule drug sectors…, and it was sold in a highly profitable all cash transaction … to a NYSE pharma company in 2012.
  • Mr. Rogers was an initial investor [ and operating partner] with Mark and Lindsay Harms in their 2004 formation of Global Leisure Partners [“GLP”] – a London based advisor and merchant investor for transactions in the leisure area. A GLP recent transaction was a $ 2 billion acquisition … where GLP invested almost $ 200 million alongside $ 500 million from other investors it brought to the transaction.
  • Mr. Rogers joined the Board of Directors when Keith Tucker led the spin out and subsequent NYSE listing of Waddell & Reed, a Kansas City-based asset manager. Bill was Chairman of the Executive Committee and a part of its growth in distribution channels and asset size from an initial $ 30 billion in assets under management to $ 80 billion before leaving the Board.  Waddell has subsequently been acquired by Macquarie Management Holdings.  
  • Mr. Rogers aided the founder of Vinventions in a multi-hundred-million-dollar recapitalization and buyback of control from a large, Northeastern-based leveraged buyout group.  Vinventions (www.vinventions.com) is the most trusted global supplier of wine closure solutions to the wine industry and today provides 15% of the 20 billion wine closures worldwide from its locations in the USA, Belgium, Germany, France, Argentina, South Africa, and China.  The leadership values of Vinventions focus on technology, innovation, and sustainability. In 2021, Vinventions was successfully merged into a holding company of Europe's largest royal family.
  • Mr. Rogers was fortunate to work with members of the British royal family [i] to articulate an evolving set of “best of class procedures for sustainability in agriculture, timber, and renewable energy”; and [ii] to bring opportunities and capital to those groups who demonstrate such and whose focus includes a market-based approach of “doing good while doing well.”  

Mr. Rogers is one of the founding partners (along with his long-time partners Tom Barrack and David Bonderman) of Colony Capital.  Since its inception in 1991, Colony invested over $ 70 billion in real estate-related assets. Its successor entity today is DigitalBridge.

Prior to Colony, Mr. Rogers invested his personal capital in a number of successful real estate restructuring and leveraged corporate acquisitions. From 1983 to 1988 Mr. Rogers was, along with David Bonderman and Tom Barrack, the initial “investment team” for the Robert M. Bass Group.

Prior to 1983, Mr. Rogers served as an owner and director of DCI, a specialty food processing company, which he recapitalized and merged with an entity controlled by Richard Rainwater and Bass Brothers Enterprises of Fort Worth, Texas.

Mr. Rogers is a former partner of KPMG Peat Marwick and served as a coordinator of the original White House Conference on Small Business while on loan in 1979 from Peat Marwick to the White House. He was invited to serve as Controller for the President’s re-election campaign.

Mr. Rogers received a B.S. from the University of North Carolina in 1969, where he was a Phi Beta Kappa graduate; and he received an M.B.A. from the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business in 1972, where he was a Vehon Scholar. He is a member and former Chairman of the Kenan Flagler Business School Board of Visitors at the University of North Carolina and assisted in the oversight of its Foundation’s investments. He is a former member of the Board of Advisors for the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University and is a former trustee of the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business. Mr. Rogers lives in Fort Worth, Texas. He is a member of the University Club (New York), the Carolina Country Club (Raleigh), Shady Oaks Country Club (Fort Worth), the Coral Casino Beach Club (Santa Barbara) and the Montecito Club (Santa Barbara). His hobbies include time on the golf course, shooting, and contemporary art.

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