Howard Solomon was chief executive of a New York-based pharmaceutical company, Forest Laboratories Inc., in 1994 when his 31-year-old son Andrew sank into a deep depression. The elder Mr. Solomon invited his son back into the family home in Manhattan, helped nurse him and searched for medications that might help.
That search increased Mr. Solomon’s interest in an antidepressant sold in Europe by a Danish company, H. Lundbeck AS. He approached Lundbeck about the possibility that Forest Labs could license the antidepressant for sale in the U.S. Lundbeck’s CEO, Erik Sprunk-Jansen, initially was reluctant to consider the idea.
Mr. Solomon, unwilling to give up, told Mr. Sprunk-Jansen that he happened to be visiting Copenhagen and suggested a meeting. Mr. Sprunk-Jansen proposed lunch the next day. Mr. Solomon flew to Europe on a Concorde jet, and the two men bonded, partly over their mutual love of ballet. The result was a licensing agreement for the antidepressant, sold as Celexa in the U.S., that made Forest Labs a much larger player in pharmaceuticals.
Mr. Solomon died Jan. 8 at his home in Bedford Hills, N.Y. He was 94 years old and had been under treatment for an infection.
His efforts to understand his son’s depression and help him find effective treatment deepened bonds between them, as described in Andrew Solomon’s 2001 book, “The Noonday Demon,” a National Book Award winner. His father, Andrew Solomon wrote, “canceled all other plans to be with me,” promised better days ahead and cut food into bite-sized pieces when the young man found that too difficult.
The son dedicated the book to his father, “who gave me life not once, but twice.”
Howard Solomon survived battles with federal regulators and served as CEO of Forest Labs until his mid-80s. He served as chairman of the New York City Ballet and as a member of the executive committee of the board of the Metropolitan Opera.
Martin Howard Solomon, always known as Howard, was born Aug. 12, 1927, and grew up in the Bronx. His father, a Jewish immigrant from Romania, made neckties from dress remnants. Around age 11, while visiting a friend’s home, he heard opera recordings. He was inspired to take piano lessons and found a job selling librettos in the lobby of the Metropolitan Opera.
Though not “particularly attentive in elementary school,” according to his son Andrew, he scored high enough on exams to gain admittance to the elite Bronx High School of Science.
At City College of New York, he studied history and graduated in 1949 after serving as a secretary to the commanding officer at an air base in Hawaii. At Yale Law School, he served as an editor of the law journal and graduated in 1952.
He worked at New York law firms before setting up his own legal practice, while branching into business projects, including the Bowla Bowla chain of bowling alleys in New Jersey. In 1961, he married Carolyn Bower, a graduate of Smith College.
One of his clients appointed him to the board of Forest Labs, then a small company making medications, candy and ice cream. Top executives of Forest Labs resigned amid a financial scandal at the company, and Mr. Solomon was persuaded to step in as CEO in 1977.
After selling the candy and ice cream businesses, he focused initially on generic drugs and then began licensing drugs to be marketed under the company’s own brand names.
Sales surged after 1998, when Forest Labs began selling Celexa, a competitor of antidepressants including Prozac. In 2003, the company received Food and Drug Administration approval to market Namenda for Alzheimer’s disease.
Along with other pharmaceutical companies, Forest Labs was ensnared in a federal government crackdown on marketing practices. In 2009, the Justice Department alleged that the company improperly marketed Celexa for use in children and paid kickbacks to encourage doctors to prescribe the drug. The government also accused the company of failing to disclose a medical study that determined Celexa was ineffective for pediatric use.
In 2010, Forest Labs agreed to pay $313 million to settle the charges. Mr. Solomon wasn’t personally accused of wrongdoing. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services threatened to force his resignation from Forest Labs but backed off after protests from the company and major business groups.
Forest Labs also came under pressure from an activist investor, Carl Icahn, who acquired a stake and eventually obtained representation on the company’s board. In 2013, as he approached his 86th birthday, Mr. Solomon announced he would retire at year’s end. “I think the company is entitled to the rigorous assurances of continuity that a younger chief executive can provide,” he said.
In 2014, new management sold Forest Labs to Actavis PLC of Dublin for about $28 billion.
Mr. Solomon’s first wife died in 1991. Through his support of the arts, he met Sarah Billinghurst, who was an executive at the Metropolitan Opera. They married in 2003. She survives him, along with two sons and five grandchildren.
Marco Taglietti recalled meeting Mr. Solomon in 2007 for a job interview. They spent nearly an hour regaling each other with memories of their favorite operatic performances, then ran out of time and had to schedule another meeting to discuss the job. Dr. Taglietti was hired as chief medical officer.
At the time of his death, his family said, Mr. Solomon was listening to a favorite opera, “Der Rosenkavalier.”
Write to James R. Hagerty at [email protected]
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