Bausch & Lomb For Sale for US$10 bn, Owners Leaning Towards IPO

The owner of contact lens manufacturer and large user of medical plastics Bausch & Lomb, private equity firm Warburg Pincus, has put the company up sale for US$10 bn, according to a December 2012 report in the Financial Times newspaper. According to the Wall Street Journal the owners are also considering an initial public offering.

If a sale goes ahead, it would become the second largest private equity disposal since the start of the current financial crisis, the report states.

While a private sale is the preferred option, the latest impression is that no one has met the asking price, so the owners are leaning towards an initial public offering.

The FT report cites the following OEMs as potential bidders for the company—Abbot Group, Merck, Sanofi, Bayer, Pfizer, and GlaxoSmithKline.

Source: Wall Street Journal and Financial Times.