Randall D. Smith


Randall Duncan "Randy" Smith is an American hedge fund manager, and the founder and chief of investments of Alden Global Capital.

Early life

Randall Smith was born in 1942. 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.
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.

Career

Smith was a partner at Bear Stearns from 1975 to 1995, where he founded the convertible arbitrage department and later focused on investing in distressed assets.
He started his first investment firm at home while still working for Bear Stearns, with $20,000 he and his wife won in the late 1960s on Dream House, a television game show.
In 1998, he acquired the Bryan Tower, a 40-story downtown office building in Dallas, Texas, and his son Caleb Smith oversaw the renovation for his father's company Spire Realty, which he now runs.
In 2002, together with his second wife Barbara, and his brother Jeffrey Smith, they bought the historic 100-room 1924 Sam Houston Hotel, extensively remodelled it, and reopened it in 2005 as the Alden Hotel.
In 2007, Smith founded Alden Global Capital, and is its chief of investments.

Controversies

Smith's Alden Global Capital has been known to buy local businesses, newspapers and bleeding them dry leading to loss of jobs for the people before finally bankrupting it.

Personal life

He met his first wife Kathryn Smith, when both were Cornell students, and she earned a PhD in political science. They have a son, Caleb Smith, who was profiled in 2011 in the Dallas-based D Magazine, and a daughter. Kathryn Smith died of ovarian cancer.
He is married to Barbara Stovall Smith, and they own sixteen mansions in the Palm Beach, Florida, area through limited liability companies. Smith is known for his use of offshore companies.