Robert C. McNair

Robert C. McNair
Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Robert C. McNair is perhaps best known in the business community as the founder of Cogen Technologies, which was sold in 1999. Cogen was the largest privately-owned cogeneration company in the world, with aggregate capacity of 1,400 megawatts.

McNair also serves as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of The McNair Group, headquartered in Houston, Texas, where he oversees an investment portfolio that includes interests in two cogeneration plants in the eastern United States. Mr. McNair owns Palmetto Partners, Ltd. and RCM Financial Services, L.P., private investment entities that manage the McNairs' public and private equity investments, and is Chairman of the McNair Foundation and the Houston Texans Foundation.

Committed to bringing a National Football League team to Houston, Mr. McNair formed Houston NFL Holdings in 1998. On October 6, 1999, the NFL announced that the 32^nd NFL franchise had been awarded to Mr. McNair, returning football to the City of Houston in the year 2002 and Super Bowl XXXVIII in 2004.

McNair is also Chairman of the Board of Directors of The Texas Bowl, Inc. which brought the inaugural Texas Bowl game to Reliant Stadium on December 28, 2006. Annual Texas Bowl games feature teams from the Big 12, the Big East and Conference USA.

Stonerside Stable, a major thoroughbred horse farm in Kentucky, is also among McNair’s successes. A 1,947-acre thoroughbred horse farm and racing stable, Stonerside is home to over 250 racehorses, broodmares, yearlings and weanlings. Since its inception in 1994, Stonerside has won 72 Graded Stakes races including Grade I wins in the Belmont, Breeders Cup Mile, the Travers, the Haskell, the Hollywood Gold Cup, the Cigar Mile, the Carter, the Swaps, the Wood Memorial, the Matriarch and the Oak Leaf Stakes.  Stonerside also has finished second and third in the Kentucky Derby and was the co-breeder of Fusaichi Pegasus, winner of the Derby.

Mr. McNair is a current or past member of the Boards of Trustees of a number of institutions, including Rice University, Baylor College of Medicine, Texas Heart Institute, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston Grand Opera, the Greater Houston Partnership, the Greater Houston Convention and Visitors Bureau, the Free Enterprise Institute and the Federal Reserve Banks of Dallas and Houston.

A native of Tampa, Florida, Bob grew up in Forest City, North Carolina, and graduated from the University of South Carolina, where he was president of the student body in 1958.  In 1999 McNair received an honorary doctor of humane letters degree from the University of South Carolina. Bob has been a Houston resident since 1960.  He and his wife have four grown children and 12 grandchildren.