Another KO record for Donald Trump

By Steve James

NEW YORK (Reuters): Call him the "anti-Trump".

Real estate executive Steven Roth, whose Vornado Realty Trust clinched a lease on Thursday on New York's landmark World Trade Center with a US$3.2 billion bid, is everything rival developer Donald Trump is not.

Where Trump is loud, self-promoting and hangs out at all the right places in Manhattan, Atlantic City, Washington and Los Angeles, Roth is quiet, low-key and somewhat secretive.

But just because he doesn't appear in the tabloids with blonde models on his arm or in the company of boxers or politicians, does not mean Roth has not had his share of high-profile deals.

He was involved in past efforts to buy New York's other real estate gems, the Empire State building and Rockefeller Center.

And he beat out Trump in 1992 for the plum Alexander's department store site a block from Bloomingdale's on Manhattan's posh Upper East Side.

He has a reputation as tough and blunt-spoken. Since 1981, he has built Vornado into a major real estate company that owns and manages some 66 million square feet of real estate, mostly offices and strip malls in New York and New Jersey.

In a rare public appearance in 1999, Roth spoke to the National Association of Real Estate Investment Trusts (REIT) and famously described being a REIT executive as "like standing between a dog and a fire hydrant."

"He's a very big player," said Sheila McGrath, a real estate industry analyst at Dresdner KB. "He has a quietness and doesn't chase after the press. It's an interesting comparison with Donald Trump."

Steve Sakwa, a Merrill Lynch real estate analyst, said: "He's a big player who's made a lot of money. His outward personality is tough and I have heard people say 'I don't want to negotiate with Steve Roth'.

"So he's ruthless, but somewhat conservative. He only wants to buy something if he can make a lot of money. Typically, he's not interested in risky ventures."

Sakwa said although Roth, 58, and Trump were rarely direct rivals for the same space -- Roth is more interested in office and retail space, while Trump's empire has been built on hotels and casinos -- they did battle over the Alexander's site. Trump coveted the prime site, but Roth emerged victorious.

Vornado was founded 35 years ago as a retailing company, but Roth began its transformation in 1980 when he bought out the struggling discount department store chain Two Guys, closed it down and leased the space to other retailers.

Similarly, "he didn't buy Alexander's because he wanted to turn around a failed retailer. He wanted to develop the real estate," said Sakwa.

After nine years of deliberations, that earned Roth the sobriquet Hamlet in New York magazine, Roth is now reportedly close to signing with media company Bloomberg L.P. to build a 70- story tower on the site.

But winning the 99-year lease on the World Trade Center (WTC) and its 10-million-square-feet of office and retail space was the glittering prize, said Sakwa. "Whoever wins the WTC project will probably be in the top spot in New York, which is a 400-million- square-feet market."

One blemish on Roth's record was a deal he made a few years ago with Crescent Real Estate Equities Co. to buy the cold storage chain AmeriCold Logistics. "It didn't pan out as people expected and he has got a black eye," said Sakwa.

Although his professional achievements are well-documented, Roth the person remains an enigma.

Neither Vornado nor its public relations firm would provide a biography of Roth and unlike most publicly traded companies, Vornado's Website has no personal details about its chairman.

Similarly, no word about president Michael Fascitelli, whom Roth lured from Goldman Sachs & Co. with a compensation package that reportedly included a $25 million signing bonus and options on 1.75 million Vornado shares.

Although he is not known to be active politically, New York magazine reported Roth, a graduate of Dartmouth College, donated $90,000 to the Democratic National Committee in 1996 after attending one of President Clinton's coffee mornings at the White House.

Roth's wife, Daryl, is an off-Broadway producer and their son Jordan chose not to follow in his father's real estate footsteps but rather his mother's, producing The Donkey Show last year and touring in the Rocky Horror Show.