Steven Roth (born 1941) is an American real estate investor, the founder and chairman of Vornado Realty Trust, chairman and chief executive officer of Alexander's, and chairman of JBG Smith.
In 1964, along with Russell Wight Jr. and $250,000 in seed money from real estate investor David Mandelbaum, Roth formed Interstate Properties to invest in shopping centers. He repaid Mandelbaum within a year.
In 1979, Interstate purchased an interest in Two Guys, a New Jersey discount appliance chain, and later gained control of its parent company Vornado, a former fan manufacturer that was purchased by Two Guys in 1959 to utilize its tax loss carryforwards. Roth dissolved the chain, turning the stores into strip malls. His efforts were very successful and Roth formed Vornado Realty Trust to hold the real estate.
In 1993, Vornado Realty Trust became a public company via an initial public offering. In 1995, Vornado purchased a controlling interest in Alexander's, a failed department store that had substantial real estate holdings, for $54.8 million from Citicorp. The stake owned by Citicorp was previously owned by Donald Trump, who was forced to turn his shares over to the bank.
In 1997, Vornado purchased 7 Midtown office buildings with 4 million square feet from Bernard H. Mendik for $656 million. In 1998, Vornado purchased 20 more office buildings in Manhattan for $1.7 billion, including One Penn Plaza.
In 2006, Roth was a major donor to Eliot Spitzer's New York gubernatorial campaign.
In 2011, Roth donated $15 million to his alma mater, Dartmouth College.
Roth has served as a trustee of the Intrepid Museum Foundation, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, and the New York University School of Medicine Foundation, and the Horace Mann School. He also served as chair of the National Association of Real Estate Investment Trusts (NAREIT) and as a member of the Board of Overseers of Tuck. He funded the Roth Center for Jewish Life at Dartmouth and in 2012, he received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from Dartmouth.
In 2016, Roth served as one of the top economic advisers to Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign.
In January 2017, the President discussed establishing a national panel to review infrastructure projects with Roth and another New York developer Richard LeFrak as co-heads. Roth was included in a March 2017 meeting at the White House on the Trump Administration infrastructure plan.
