BLOG: Bausch + Lomb
Click Here to Manage Email Alerts
It feels like it happened just last fall. I can hardly believe that it’s been 17 years since Bausch + Lomb turned 150 years old, but the numbers don’t lie.
Founded in 1863, B+L celebrated its sesquicentennial during the AAO meeting in Anaheim? Or was it Orlando? Doesn’t matter. B+L was still, you know, B and damn L. There was swagger in the C-suite. B+L had something like the fourth or fifth highest Q-rating of any American brand, trailing only Coca-Cola and Disney and trouncing Apple and Google. They rented out the Magic Kingdom — the whole Magic Kingdom — and threw themselves a big ol’ party. I snuck my buddy Mike Driscoll, an Allergan ECBA, into the Sheryl Crow concert.
We may or may not have slipped into Dick Lindstrom’s seats after he and the B+L gobbersnoppers ducked out midway through her set.
When you think of B+L, you think of firsts. First soft contact lenses of any consequence. They created the first combination of high-quality sun wear and fashion when they launched Ray-Ban. Admit it, after you saw “Risky Business” you bought a pair of Wayfarers. Heck, they even made news when they LOST a significant opportunity in any high publicity eye care event: They did NOT supply the Navy pilots with sunglasses. (Who did? *See below.)
In 2007, at the height of the pre-recession financial boom, B+L was taken private by Warburg Pincus. As an aside, this introduced the eye care world to Brent Saunders, an introduction of some significance. After 7 years with Warburg Pincus, B+L was sold to Valeant, a company built through financial engineering and led by CEO Michael Pearson.
I have made no secret of my disappointment in how B+L was managed by Valeant. One of the greatest names in all of American business was tarnished by a series of poor decisions, all made worse by corporate scandals. Things have been looking up under the stewardship of Joseph Papa. Mr. Papa has divested some $5 billion worth of assets and paid down another $8 billion or so in corporate debt.
In a surprise announcement we now learn that the eye care business will be spun out under the name Bausch + Lomb, once again to fly as a solo enterprise. This is really big news.
At the moment B+L is doing a ton of things right. The surgical division has been bringing out all sorts of new stuff, from IOLs to advancements in phaco machines. B+L pharma looks like they’ve gotten off the schneid and started to put some muscle behind their anti-inflammatory franchises. Heck, they even went out and bought a new dry eye asset, picking off one of the Novaliq products.
No matter where you sit on the ballfield of eye care, our world has always been better in general with a stronger, healthier B+L in the game.
What’s the new company gonna look like? Who knows? They still have not made public their management structure, nor have they made clear how much of the remaining Bausch debt will go with the new B+L. Maybe they just report as a separate division. Perhaps they are listed as a totally separate company on one of the stock exchanges. It’s not inconceivable that B+L will simply be picked off by another private equity group; there’s an awful lot of money floating out there just itching to buy something. It’s far from clear how the details will shake out. All I know is that Bausch + Lomb, our beloved B + Damn L, is about to be set free. That’s a good thing for eye care.
Maybe we can get Sheryl to play at the coming out party.
*Martin-Copeland Co., Richard E. White, CEO
Collapse