Our People

Biography

Fred Malek is Founder and Chairman of Thayer Capital Partners, a Washington D.C. based merchant bank that has $1.5 billion of equity under management and focuses on management buyouts.  Mr. Malek is also Founder and Chairman of Thayer Hotel Investors, a hotel investment company that has acquired and owns approximately $1.4 billion of hotel assets.

Mr. Malek led the 1995 acquisition of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company, with Marriott International as a major equity partner.  He was one of three leaders in the acquisition of Northwest Airlines and was a director and major investor in Northwest Airlines, where he served as President and vice Chairman from late 1989 through 1991.  Earlier, Mr. Malek led with management the acquisition of CB Richard Ellis (formerly Coldwell banker), the largest real estate services company in the world where he served as Co-Chairman until 1996 and was an investment partner with President Bush in the Texas Rangers Baseball Club. He currently serves as a Director of several publicly traded companies, including Automatic Data Processing Corp. and CB Richard Ellis.  

Mr. Malek was President of Marriott Hotels from 1981 through mid-1988, responsible for more than $3 billion in annual sales and approximately 70,000 workers.  During his eight-year tenure, profits of Marriott Hotels grew fivefold and Marriott Hotels rose from fourth to first in consumer preference.

In addition to his business career, Mr. Malek has served as an advisor to four U.S. Presidents over the past two decades.  In the early seventies, he entered government as Deputy Undersecretary of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare.  He later became Special Assistant to the President of the United States and Deputy Director of the U.S. Office of Management and Budget under Presidents Nixon and Ford.  Mr. Malek advised President Reagan as a member of the executive committee of the President’s Council on Cost Control, as a member of the President’s Commission on Private Sector Initiatives, and as a member of the President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports.  More recently, he served President Bush as Director of the 1988 Republican Convention, as Director of the 1990 Economic Summit of Industrialized Nations, with the lifetime rank of Ambassador, and as Campaign Manager for President Bush during 1992.  Mr. Malek served as National Finance Chairman for the 2008 McCain Presidential Campaign and in 2008 was appointed by President George W. Bush to the Board of Visitors of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.

Mr. Malek is a graduate of West Point and the Harvard Business School, and served in Vietnam.  He also serves on a number of charitable and educational Boards, including the George H.W. Bush Presidential Library, the Aspen Institute, the America-Israel Friendship League, and the American Friends of the Czech Republic where he is Chairman.