Randall Smith is a senior special writer for the Money & Investing section of The Wall Street Journal. He covers the securities industry.

 In 1981, Mr. Smith joined the Journal's New York bureau as a real estate reporter. He has covered institutional investing and the computer industry and has written "Heard on the Street" columns. In 1989, he became a reporter with the Journal's Money & Investing section covering mergers, and in November 1993, he was named an assistant news editor and continued to write articles for the paper. He became a news editor for the section in February 1997 and was named to his current position in February 1999.

 Mr. Smith appeared weekly on the National Broadcasting Co.'s television program "News at Sunrise" from 1987 to 1994.

 From 1972 to 1976, Mr. Smith served as a junior officer in the U.S. Navy aboard the aircraft carrier Independence and destroyer escort Valdez. In 1976, he became an associate editor for MBA Communications in New York, and he moved to the New York Post in October 1977, covering City Hall, the city budget and labor. He joined the New York Daily News in 1980 and covered real estate.

 In 2008, Mr. Smith was part of a Journal team that won the Scripps Howard Foundation's National Journalism Award in the business and economics category for their coverage of the subprime mortgage crisis. That same year, he and a team of reporters were honored by the New York Press Club in the business category for "Mortgage Meltdown on Wall Street." In June 2005, Mr. Smith and a group of fellow Journal reporters won the Business Award from the New York Press Club for their "Open Secrets" series, exposing questionable activities in a broad range of financial areas. In 2003, Mr. Smith was a member of a team of Journal reporters awarded the 2003 Pulitzer Prize in explanatory reporting for a series of stories that exposed corporate scandals, elucidated them and brought them to life in compelling narratives. In 2002, Mr. Smith and Journal reporter Susan Pulliam won a George Polk Award in the financial-reporting category for a series of articles exposing how Credit Suisse First Boston created profits for itself by manipulating the system for promoting initial public offerings.

 Born in Montclair, N.J., Mr. Smith received a bachelor's degree from Harvard College.

He and his wife, Tina Cohoe, have two sons and live in New York City.