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 Wall Street Journal fires Jay Solomon over involvement with arms dealer 
 
 The Wall Street Journal has fired chief foreign affairs correspondent Jay Solomon for what the paper called a “breach” and ethical lapses over his involvement with an Iranian-born arms dealer. 
 
 Washington Bureau Chief Paul Beckett made the announcement to staff during a hastily called meeting on Wednesday after meeting with senior editors in New York the day before. Beckett did not elaborate on Solomon’s situation, only to say that an upcoming Associated Press investigation would have more details. Beckett took no questions and asked any staffers who knew anything about the situation to come forward, according to multiple sources. 
 
 Shortly after the announcement, the Associated Press on Wednesday afternoon published an article that said Solomon was offered a 10 percent stake in a company called Denx LLC by "Farhad Azima, an Iranian-born aviation magnate who has ferried weapons for the CIA.” Azima, the article said, was also one of Solomon's sources for years. Solomon’s involvement was unearthed as part of an AP investigation into Azima, in which the AP obtained a "collection of tens of thousands of emails his lawyers say was stolen by hackers,” which included conversations between Azima and Solomon. 
 
 According to the AP, Solomon spent more than a year discussing the business effort with Azima, though it's not clear from those messages that Solomon took any concrete steps to make the ideas a reality. The hacked messages included one in which Solomon said in October 2014, “Our business opportunities are so promising." 
 
 In another email from April 2015, Azima wrote to Solomon about a $725 million proposal contract with the United Arab Emirates that would "allow planes to spy on activity inside nearby Iran." According to the emails, Solomon was expected to "ferry the proposal" to government representatives from the UAE at a lunch the next day. 
 
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 “We all wish best of luck to Jay on his first defense sale,” Azima wrote in an email also sent to Solomon, according to the AP. 
 
 In a statement, the Journal said Solomon "forfeited" the newspaper's trust. 
 
 “We are dismayed by the actions and poor judgment of Jay Solomon,” the Journal said in a statement. "The allegations raised by this reporting are serious. While our own investigation continues, we have concluded that Mr. Solomon violated his ethical obligations as a reporter, as well as our standards. He has not been forthcoming with us about his actions or his reporting practices and he has forfeited our trust. Mr. Solomon is no longer employed by The Wall Street Journal." 
 
 Solomon, a veteran correspondent who published a book last year about Iran and the “spy games, bank battles and secret deals that reshaped the Middle East,” did not respond to emails seeking comment. But in a statement to the AP, he said he "clearly made mistakes in my reporting and entered into a world I didn’t understand.” 
 
 “I never entered into any business with Farhad Azima, nor did I ever intend to. But I understand why the emails and the conversations I had with Mr. Azima may look like I was involved in some seriously troubling activities. I apologize to my bosses and colleagues at the Journal, who were nothing but great to me," Solomon said. 
 
 According to the AP, Solomon did not mention Azima by name in any of his articles over the past four years, and Azima is not listed in the index of Solomon's 2016 book. But on Twitter, Solomon was Azima's first Twitter follower and Azima's first tweet was to Solomon in 2014. 
 
 "Hi @WSJSolomon," Azima wrote. "@azimausa welcome to Twitter, your excellency!" Solomon wrote in return. 
 
 Hadas Gold is a reporter at Politico. ||||| Jay Solomon, a veteran national security reporter — seen here being interviewed on C-SPAN’s “Washington Journal” in 2014 — was fired by the Wall Street Journal after a report alleging that he had discussed business deals with a source. (C-SPAN via Associated Press) 
 
 At 3:08 pm on Wednesday, the Washington bureau of the Wall Street Journal received a cryptic email from their chief, Paul Beckett. 
 
 “Short-Notice staff Meeting at 3:15,” read the subject. The team of 40 was told to gather at their usual spot. “We won’t need chairs,” he added. “It will be short.” 
 
 Soon enough, Beckett delivered to the jittery group the news many had half-anticipated: Ace national security reporter Jay Solomon, whose desk had earlier that day been cleared off, had been fired. But as for the reason, Beckett said they’d have to read a forthcoming report from the Associated Press. 
 
 Minutes later, that story hit the bureau like a bombshell: Solomon had been fired, the AP reported, after “evidence emerged of his involvement in prospective commercial deals — including one involving arms sales to foreign governments — with an international businessman who was one of his key sources.” 
 
 According to the report, Solomon had been offered a 10 percent stake in a new company by an Iranian-born aviation magnate named Farhad Azima. Solomon told the AP he never “entered into any business dealings” with his source and never intended to. The Journal wouldn’t confirm or deny this part of the report but apparently saw enough to let him go. 
 
 Farhad Azima, an Iranian-born aviation mogul whose alleged dealings with Solomon led to the reporter’s firing. (Jill Toyoshiba/The Kansas City Star via AP) 
 
 “We are dismayed by the actions and poor judgment of Jay Solomon,” the Journal said in a statement. “The allegations raised by this reporting are serious. While our own investigation continues, we have concluded that Mr. Solomon violated his ethical obligations as a reporter, as well as our standards. He has not been forthcoming with us about his actions or his reporting practices and he has forfeited our trust. Mr. Solomon is no longer employed by The Wall Street Journal.” 
 
 Solomon is no slouch. His work covering national security and foreign affairs had been submitted by the paper for Pulitzer consideration, according to former and current Journal employees. He’s the author of a book about Iran and is widely considered among the staff to be a favorite of Editor in Chief Gerard Baker, who would often praise him in editors’ meetings. 
 
 Solomon’s two decades at the Journal included stints in Asia and Africa. While in Washington, he had become a well-sourced fixture on the foreign policy social scene. He’s known to have a close working relationship with Yousef al-Otaiba, the United Arab Emirates’ ambassador to the United States. 
 
 He had drawn criticism, though, from some colleagues and government officials who perceived his work to show a bias against the Obama administration’s nuclear deal with Iran. In his 2016 book, “The Iran Wars,” Solomon wrote that the deal “rather than calming the world’s most combustible region, risks inflaming it.” 
 
 No one, however, saw him as a potential business partner with his sources. That is, until the Associated Press, in the course of reporting another story, came across emails and text messages between Solomon and Azima that Azima’s lawyers said were stolen by hackers. Over the past three decades, Azima has been tied to the Iran-contra affair, dealt weapons to Persian Gulf and Balkan nations, and worked his ample connections in Washington. 
 
 Hours before the Solomon story broke, the AP reported that Azima, 75, is under investigation on suspicions that he bribed a former UAE official in order to reap profits from a hotel sale in Tbilisi, Georgia. It was in the process of reporting this story that reporters came across his correspondence with Solomon. 
 
 [From AP: ‘Worth killing over’: How a plane mogul dodged U.S. scrutiny] 
 
 In April 2015, the AP reported Wednesday, Azima wrote to Solomon about a possible $725 million contract with the United Arab Emirates, in which he asked the reporter to bring the proposal to a UAE government representative he was lunching with the following day. 
 
 “We all wish best of luck to Jay on his first defense deal,” Azima wrote to Solomon and others in the email. 
 
 And the exchanges went both ways. In one particularly suspect instance from October 2014, Solomon texted Azima: “Our business opportunities are so promising.” 
 
 On Wednesday, Solomon expressed regrets for his actions while at the same time insisting that things weren’t quite as bad as they may look. 
 
 “I clearly made mistakes in my reporting and entered into a world I didn’t understand.” Solomon told the AP on Wednesday. “I never entered into any business with Farhad Azima, nor did I ever intend to. But I understand why the emails and the conversations I had with Mr. Azima may look like I was involved in some seriously troubling activities. I apologize to my bosses and colleagues at the Journal, who were nothing but great to me.” 
 
 Hours after the sudden all-staff meeting, Journal employees were still coming to grips with what this all means. 
 
 “I can’t imagine this will go away quickly,” one of them said. “Someone must be going through all his articles now. It might take a little while to know exactly how bad this is.” ||||| David Solomon will become the sole operating chief and president at Goldman Sachs after Harvey Schwartz steps down next month. 
 
 David Solomon will become the sole operating chief and president at Goldman Sachs after Harvey Schwartz steps down next month. Photo: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg News 
 
 David Solomon became the heir apparent at Goldman Sachs GS 0.22% Group Inc. Monday after his main rival for the top job abruptly resigned, moves that show the Wall Street powerhouse is continuing to move beyond its trading roots. 
 
 The surprise announcement came after Goldman’s board of directors last month anointed Mr. Solomon as the eventual successor to current Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein, over co-President Harvey Schwartz, according to people familiar with the matter. 
 
 The Wall Street Journal reported last week that Mr. Blankfein could retire as soon as year-end, though he remains firmly in control of his exit. Messrs. Schwartz, 54, and Solomon, 56, who were jointly elevated to the No. 2 role in December 2016, were the top contenders to succeed him. 
 
 The two hail from different parts of the firm. Mr. Solomon is a longtime investment banker who DJs on the side. Mr. Schwartz, a karate black belt, scaled the ranks of Goldman’s trading arm on his way to becoming chief financial officer. 
 
 In choosing Mr. Solomon, Goldman is going with a business builder who is respected, if not universally loved, inside the firm. The move amounts to a bet that the coming decade will look little like the last one, as Goldman continues to evolve from a secretive trading powerhouse into a more entrepreneurial place. 
 
 The two men were told of the board’s decision last week, at which point Mr. Schwartz, who was informed upon his return from a West Coast trip, said he would leave, people familiar with the matter said. 
 
 Mr. Blankfein shared the news Monday morning with the firm’s management committee, a group of about 35 top officials. “Harvey’s leaving the firm,” the typically blunt CEO said, according to people briefed on the meeting. Mr. Solomon quickly canceled a planned trip to China. 
 
 For generations, power at Goldman has swung between bankers and traders. When Mr. Blankfein, a former trading chief, took over in 2006, that business was dominant. Since the financial crisis, though, it has faltered, sending Goldman into new businesses like consumer banking and low-fee index funds in search of growth. 
 
 Those changes were seen to favor Mr. Solomon. He is known less as a superstar deal maker than a strong manager, able to prune dead weight, motivate strivers and marshal Goldman’s resources behind big initiatives. 
 
 Harvey Schwartz Photo: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg News 
 
 “David is a pied piper, and I mean that in the best way,” said Chris Nassetta, CEO of Hilton Hotels Corp., who worked with Mr. Solomon at Bear Stearns. “People want to follow him.” 
 
 Mr. Solomon came to Wall Street in the mid-1980s, selling commercial paper at Drexel Burnham Lambert. Off duty, he played social planner to a group of college friends, organizing casino outings in Atlantic City and summer rentals in the Hamptons, where roommates would wake up to find him mowing the lawn. 
 
 After a stint at Bear Stearns, Mr. Solomon joined Goldman as a rare outside partner in 1999 and set about to build a junk-debt business. In 2006 he assumed responsibility for Goldman’s investment bankers, who advise companies on mergers and fundraisings. 
 
 Mr. Solomon is credited with professionalizing that division, which he ran for a decade. The unit’s profit margin doubled, even as some longtime bankers lamented the decline of collegiality and autonomy. 
 
 He had a policy of giving zero bonuses to the bottom 5% of employees, executives said. But he also spearheaded Goldman’s efforts to lighten the workload for junior bankers, and took a leading role in the firm’s effort to recruit and promote women. He built a debt capital-markets business that reported record revenues last year. 
 
 Mr. Schwartz, meanwhile, embodied Goldman’s profitable past, having scaled the ranks of its trading division. As finance chief from 2013 to 2016, Mr. Schwartz navigated the political and market forces that reshaped banking after the crisis, and was a strong hand in the areas of risk management and regulation. 
 
 Market Talk 11:04 ET - News that David Solomon has jumped to the front of the line to succeed Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein is helping boost shares of the investment bank. The surprise announcement sends Goldman shares up nearly 1% in morning trading, compared to a flat performance for bank stocks like JPMorgan Chase. Solomon is becoming sole president and COO of the firm with the disclosed April departure of his co-No. 2 at the firm, Harvey Schwartz. The two have been locked in an internal competition for the top spot at Goldman for more than a year. (Aaron.Lucchetti@wsj.com) Market Talk is a stream of real-time news and market analysis available on Dow Jones Newswires. To learn more about Market Talk and Dow Dow Jones Newswires, please visit https://www.dowjones.com/products/newswires/. 
 
 He graduated from high school in New Jersey and didn’t bother applying to college, instead joining a local gym as an athletic trainer. He eventually attended Rutgers University, working as nightclub bouncer and other odd jobs to pay his way, and joined Citigroup Inc. as an operations temp in 1989. 
 
 He came to Goldman’s commodities trading arm in 1997 as a derivatives salesman, helping energy and mining companies protect themselves from price swings. 
 
 By 2008, Mr. Schwartz was running the trading division. As the financial crisis unfolded, he kept the firm on the offensive while competitors pulled back. The gambit worked: Goldman’s traders made $33 billion in 2009, the most profitable year on record for a Wall Street broker-dealer. 
 
 Mr. Schwartz was named CFO four years later, a move so unexpected that senior executives ​including the firm’s heads of risk and accounting threatened to quit, according to a person familiar with the matter. 
 
 But Mr. Schwartz won over critics by overseeing an operation that avoided surprises that plagued other banks. His 18-quarter tenure as CFO is captured in pen on a pair of lime-green boxing gloves that he keeps in his office, a gift from Goldman’s finance team: “18-0, all by KO.” 
 
 As co-president, he helped shepherd the firm’s consumer-lending initiative, Marcus, to its 2016 launch. He served as Goldman’s point man on client accounts including Tesla Inc. and SoftBank Group Corp. , and organized a new $5 billion investment joint venture with China Investment Corp. that was announced in November, according to people familiar with the matter. 
 
 “It’s been an incredible 21 years,” he said in his final management committee meeting Monday, according to attendees. “I’ve gotten more out of the firm than I put in. It’s been an honor.” 
 
 Write to Liz Hoffman at liz.hoffman@wsj.com
– A Wall Street Journal reporter was fired Wednesday over potential business dealings with an Iranian-born arms dealer. The Washington Post reports Jay Solomon, chief foreign affairs correspondent for the Journal, had received Pulitzer consideration and was well-liked by the paper's editor in chief. His shocking termination springs from an AP investigation into Farhad Azima, who Solomon used as a source for stories. Azima, who has dealt weapons to multiple nations and was tied to the Iran-contra affair, offered Solomon a 10% stake in a company called Denx. While it's unclear if Solomon ever accepted that stake, the AP uncovered 18 months of emails and texts between Solomon and Azima discussing business together. In 2014, Solomon texted Azima: "Our business opportunities are so promising." The following year, Azima wished Solomon luck "on his first defense sale" in regards to delivering a proposal to UAE representatives. Also in 2015, there was talk of Denx being involved in an effort to bring down the government of Kuwait, though Solomon denies any knowledge of that. "Mr. Solomon violated his ethical obligations as a reporter, as well as our standards," Politico quotes a statement from the Journal as saying. The newspaper says it was "dismayed" by Solomon's actions and "poor judgement." Solomon, while denying ever getting into business with Azima, says he understands "why the emails and the conversations I had with Mr. Azima may look like I was involved in some seriously troubling activities."