Dan Smith is the founder and CEO of Four Point Alliance. Four Point Alliance (FPA) is a commercial real estate advisory firm specializing in expert witness testimony and litigation support in real estate and capital markets lawsuits. Dan leads an alliance of banking professionals who have 30 years of experience in the real estate capital markets industry. Through an affiliation with Hart Advisors Group, L.L.C., Four Point Alliance also offers CMBS loan restructure, loan assumption and asset management services.

Dan has worked in litigation support providing expert witness opinions for the past two years on transactions with principal balances over $1 billion in losses. He lends his expertise on capital markets and institutional lending issues ranging from CMBS breaches by the issuer to bankruptcy opinions on individual loans. He has also provided support for opinions in depositions and trial work.

Prior to forming Four Point Alliance, Dan was the Managing Director of Capital Markets lending in the United States for RBC Capital Markets. RBC Capital Markets is the capital markets group for the Royal Bank of Canada. Dan was responsible for origination, underwriting and closing commercial and multifamily loans in the United States for inclusion in CMBS pools created and sold in the US. Dan led a team that originated approximately $2.5 billion of commercial real estate loans and securitized approximately $1.8 billion of product.

Before working for RBC, Dan was the Senior Vice President of North America Debt for General Electric (GE) Capital. During his ten years at GE, Dan was responsible for origination, underwriting, closing, and asset management for the commercial real estate portfolio in the United States and Canada. Dan was responsible for loans GE kept for investment, and also for loans originated and sold in CMBS pools. All loans originated for CMBS sale were successfully placed in securitized pools. He worked with investors, rating agencies, and industry participants regarding underwriting standards, policies, and procedures of the lending industry.

Previous to this tenure with GE, Dan helped create and run a commercial CMBS lender, CapSource. In the early 1990s, CapSource originated loans for inclusion in CMBS pools. All loans originated by CapSource were successfully placed in CMBS pools.

Prior to forming CapSource, Dan founded and ran the Commercial Real Estate Ratings Group for Duff and Phelps Rating Co. (now named Fitch). Dan was involved in the creation of all the commercial real estate rating policies and successfully rated billions of CMBS mortgage securities. This included office, industrial, retail, multifamily, hospitality, single purpose and mixed-use, and self-storage properties.

As a leading CMBS expert, Dan is a speaker at numerous conferences such as the Commercial Mortgage Securities Association (CMSA), the Mortgage Banking Association (MBA), Crittenden, and other industry trade groups. He has authored numerous articles about commercial real estate and CMBS lending.

Dan has a Bachelor of Arts degree in Mathematics from DePaul University. Prior to his real estate career he worked as an actuary and a high school mathematics teacher.