Randy Smith | |
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Born | Randall Duncan Smith 1942 (age 81–82) |
Education |
Cornell University (
BA) University of Pennsylvania ( MBA) |
Spouses |
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Relatives | Russ Smith (brother) |
Randall Duncan "Randy" Smith (born 1942) is an American hedge fund manager, and the founder and chief of investments of Alden Global Capital. Smith is known as a pioneer of vulture capitalism, the purchase and dismantling of distressed firms. [1]
Smith was born in 1942. [2] He earned a bachelor's degree from Cornell University in 1965, followed by an MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in 1967. [3] [2]
His younger brother Russ Smith founded the Baltimore City Paper and the Washington City Paper, which he sold for $4 million, and in 1989 founded the New York Press. [2]
Smith was a partner at Bear Stearns from 1975 to 1996, where he founded the convertible arbitrage department and later focused on investing in distressed assets. [3] [4]
He started his first investment firm at home while still working for Bear Stearns, with $20,000 he and his wife[ clarification needed] won in the late 1960s on Dream House, a television game show. [2]
In 1998, Smith acquired the Bryan Tower, a 40-story downtown office building in Dallas, Texas. His son Caleb Smith oversaw the renovation for his father's company Spire Realty, which he now runs. [5]
In 2002, together with his second wife Barbara (a Houston native), and his brother Jeffrey Smith, Randy Smith bought the historic 100-room 1924 Sam Houston Hotel, extensively remodelled it, and reopened it in 2005 as the Alden Hotel. [2] In 2010, the ownership of the Alden Houston formally transferred to Northwood Investors. [6] In 2012, Northwood sold the hotel to American Liberty Hospitality and Gentry Mills Capital and returned to its original name as The Sam Houston Hotel. [7]
Smith and his wife Barbara own sixteen residential investment properties in the Palm Beach, Florida area through limited liability companies, properties from which they draw rental income. [8]
In 2007, Smith founded Alden Global Capital, and is its chief of investments. [3] As of May 2021, Alden Global is the second-largest newspaper publisher in the United States. [9] [10] [11]
Alden has a reputation for sharply cutting costs by reducing the number of journalists working on its newspapers. [10] [11] [12] [13]
The New York Times, in a 1991 article titled "Bottom Fishing with R.D. Smith" reported on conflicts of interest while Smith was at Bear Stearns. [14]
In 2005, Smith settled claims from a court-appointed bankruptcy trustee associated with an investment in Hawaiian Airlines. [15]
Writing in The Atlantic, McKay Coppins has criticized Smith and Alden co-founder Heath Freeman, saying "no one has been more mercenary or less interested in pretending to care about their publications’ long-term health." [1]
He met his first wife Kathryn Smith, when both were Cornell students, and she earned a PhD in political science. [2] They have a son, Caleb Smith, who was profiled in 2011 in the Dallas-based D Magazine, and a daughter, Abigail (d. 2018), who was the mother of indie rock musician Blondshell. [2] [5] Kathryn Smith died of ovarian cancer. [5]
He is married to Barbara Stovall Smith.