Bausch & Lomb

Bausch + Lomb Corporation

Company type	Public
Traded as	TSX: BLCO NYSE: BLCO
Industry	Medical instruments
Founded	1853 (1853) in Rochester, New York, US
Founders	John Bausch Henry Lomb
Headquarters	Vaughan, Ontario, Canada
Key people	Brent Saunders (CEO)
Products	Eye-care products and equipment
Revenue	US$3.77 billion (2022)
Operating income	US$207 million (2022)
Net income	US$6 million (2022)
Total assets	US$11.1 billion (2022)
Total equity	US$7.10 billion (2022)
Number of employees	c. 12,900 (2022)
Parent	Bausch Health
Website	bausch.com
Footnotes / references

John Bausch and Henry Lomb

Bausch & Lomb (since 2010 stylized as Bausch + Lomb) is an American-Canadian eye health products company based in Vaughan, Ontario, Canada. It is one of the world's largest suppliers of contact lenses, lens care products, pharmaceuticals, intraocular lenses, and other eye surgery products. The company was founded in Rochester, New York, in 1853 by optician John Bausch and cabinet maker turned financial backer Henry Lomb. Until its sale in 2013, Bausch + Lomb was one of the oldest continually operating companies in the United States.

Bausch + Lomb was a public company listed on the NYSE, until it was acquired by private equity firm Warburg Pincus in 2007. In May 2013, Canadian-based Valeant Pharmaceuticals announced that it would acquire Bausch + Lomb from Warburg Pincus for $4.5 billion in cash. The deal, which was approved by shareholders, closed on August 5, 2013. On May 6, 2022, the company completed an initial public offering and again became publicly traded. As of 2022, the company employs about 12,900 people, and manufactures and markets health care products directly or indirectly in approximately 100 countries.

Company history

Early years

New York headquarters of the Bausch & Lomb Optical Company in 1891

In 1853, John Bausch and Henry Lomb, both German immigrants, established a small but ambitious workshop producing monocles in Rochester, New York. By 1861, their operation had expanded to manufacturing vulcanite rubber eyeglass frames and other precision vision products.

Early growth of the company

During the American Civil War, the Union blockade caused the price of gold and European horn to rise dramatically. This resulted in a growing demand for the Bausch + Lomb spectacles made from vulcanite.

In 1876, Ernst Gundlach joined the company as it began to manufacture microscopes. Later that year, the Bausch & Lomb Optical Company won a distinction at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition. The company also produced photographic lenses (1883), spectacle lenses (1889), microtomes (1890), binoculars and telescopes (1893). From 1892 in cooperation with Zeiss in Germany, the company produced optical lenses. In this manner, at the end of the 19th century, the product range included eyeglasses, microscopes and binoculars, as well as projectors, camera lenses and camera diaphragms.

• 
  Microscope, 1883
• 
  Universal Microscope, Bausch and Lomb, c. 1890
• 
  Bausch & Lomb Convertible Balopticon projector, c. 1913

Expansion of production at the beginning of the 20th century

With the growth of the US army, under President Theodore Roosevelt and the buildup of the naval fleet, Bausch & Lomb received the commission, through the supplier Saegmuller, to manufacture high-precision lenses for optical measurement and founded a joint venture with Saegmuller. At the same time as this new expansion, a research department with five members was started to develop new products and improve old ones. A new alliance with the Zeiss company in Germany ensured competitive advantages for the three participants, Bausch & Lomb, Saegmuller and Zeiss, in terms of patent use and opening new markets. In 1902, William Bausch, the son of the founder, developed a process to create the desired lens shape directly by casting molten glass. Previously, the glass parts for the lenses had to be separated, ground and polished in a complicated process, and this brought significant savings in time and materials.

The company produced the first optical-quality glass in America during the early to mid-1900s. By the year 1903 the company began manufacturing microscopes, binoculars, and camera shutters.

The First and Second World Wars

The further development of the firm was affected by political events. Because of the World Wars and the consequent need for optical instruments such as field glasses, range finders, camera lenses, binocular telescopes, searchlight mirrors, torpedo tube sights, and periscopes, the product range could be considerably broadened. Until World War I, optical glass and the instruments made from it (including many military instruments) were often imported into most European and North American countries from Germany. The same was also true of chemical products and laboratory equipment. The outbreak of the war, with Germany's new enemy status, created a scramble to rapidly enhance the domestic industries. In 1933, Bausch + Lomb started to honor outstanding high school science students with the Bausch+Lomb Honorary Science Award. In the 1930s, military products represented 70% of total production. The Ray-Ban brand of sunglasses was developed for pilots in 1936.

After 1945

At a time when the cinema was being superseded by television, Bausch & Lomb developed improved optics for the CinemaScope process, which popularized the film-based anamorphic format and led most cinemas to double the widths of their screens.

In 1965 Bausch & Lomb acquired the patent for the hydrogel contact lenses created by Czech scientists Otto Wichterle and Drahoslav Lím. In 1971, after three years of development work, two years for the medical approval by the United States Food and Drug Administration and an investment of three million USD, Bausch + Lomb launched contact lenses made of Poly-HEMA. In contrast to the contact lenses previously available, made of glass and Lucite (acrylic glass), the new lenses were softer. They were marketed under the brand name "Soflens".

In the 1970s, the company was a major producer of spectrophotometers for the dye and chemical business, such as the Spectronic 20.

A massive restructuring of the company began in the mid-1980s. What had been the core divisions, the production of lenses for various purposes, were sold off. The sunglasses division was continued as Ray-Ban and kept selling well due to effective product placement. By the planned acquisition of other firms, such as Polymer Technology Corporation and Dr. Mann Pharma, existing business areas such as contact lens production were strengthened and new ones were initiated.

In 1997, as a result of a series of company acquisitions, the division for the manufacture of surgical products was established. The Ray-Ban brand was sold in 1999 to the Italian Luxottica Group.

Company developments in recent years

Since then, Bausch & Lomb has developed into a globally operating company which is one of the largest producers of contact lenses. As of 2022, about 12,900 employees in approximately 100 countries work for the firm.

Competitors in the international eye care products market are Johnson & Johnson, Allergan, Alcon, MSD-Chibret, CooperVision, Menicon Co., Hoya Corporation, EssilorLuxottica and Carl Zeiss Meditec.

In 2023, Bausch + Lomb Corp announced it would it would buy Xiidra from Novartis for $1.75 billion and pay additional $750 million in linked to future sales for Xiidra as well as two pipeline asset.

Chief executives

Name	Title	Tenure
John Jacob Bausch	President	1885–1926
Edward Bausch	President	1926–1935
M. Herbert Eisenhart	President	1935 – December 1950
Joseph F. Taylor	President	January 1951 – November 1954
Carl S. Hallauer	President	November 1954 – March 1959
William W. McQuilkin	President	March 1959 – May 1971
Jack D. Harby	President	May 1971 –
Daniel G. Schuman	CEO	– April 1981
Daniel E. Gill	CEO	April 1981 – December 1995
William M. Carpenter	CEO	1996 – June 1998
Ron Zarella	CEO	2001–2008
Gerald Ostrov	CEO	2008 – March 2010
Brent Saunders	CEO	February 2010 – August 2013
Joseph C. Papa	CEO	May 2016 – March 2023
Brent Saunders	CEO	March 2023 – present

Business areas

The Global Eye Health Center in Rochester, New York

Business areas are divided into three large divisions:

• Vision Care: contact lenses and eye-care products.
• Pharmaceuticals: medicines for various eye diseases and irritations.
• Surgery: aids and implants.

Vision Care

In the last few years, several business areas in the Vision Care division have been developed in the framework of product diversification. The vision care segment is its main business activity, making up 58% of their quarter one 2025 revenue leading with the manufacturing of contact lenses. The product assortment includes daily soft contact lens that are designed to be worn and discarded at the end of the day, such as the "Biotrue ONEday" or "Bausch + Lomb ULTRA" silicone hydrogel lenses which can be changed after seven days without being taken out at night. These newer lens ranges represent advancements in material science and design, offering enhanced comfort, moisture retention, and visual clarity for a variety of patients inluding those with astigmatism or presbyopia.

Additionally, Bausch + Lomb manufactures lens-care products including disinfectant solutions, eye drops and eye vitamins. For contact lens users, the company provides cleaning, disinfectant and rinsing solutions as well as rewetting drops. They have recently focused on expending their eye drops for individuals with dry eye symptoms, eye allergies or eye redness with products such as Lumify eye drops and Blink tears for dry eye relief, which was acquired from Johnson & Johnson in 2023. Their eye vitamins and supplements portfolio includes various formulations aimed at addressing overall eye health, dry eye symptoms and macular health and reducing the risk of progression of Age-related Macular Degeneration (AMD). This began with the launch of PreserVision in 2001 following their collaboration with the National Eye Institute on an AREDS study and expanded recently with the launch of Blink NutriTears in 2024 intended to support tear film health.

Pharmacueticals

The Pharmaceuticals division manufactures pharmaceutical eye products, which accounted for about 26% of their 2025 quarter one revenue. This segment consists of prescription medicines for post-operative treatments and treatments for a number of eye conditions such as glaucoma, eye inflammation, ocular hypertension, dry eyes and retinal diseases. The company's engagement with specific dry eye disease treatments has developed in recent years launching Miebo in 2023 after receiving U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval in May and acquiring Xiidra from Norvartis in September of that year. These prescription medications target different aspects of dry eye disease, with Miebo addressing tear evaporation and Xiidra focusing on inflammation.

Surgicals

The Surgicals division provides medical device equipment, consumables, and instrumental tools and technologies for the treatment of corneal, cataract, vitreous and retinal eye conditions. This includes interocular lenses and delivery systems, phacoemulsification equipment, and other surgical instruments and devices necessary for cataract surgery.

PureVision

Bausch + Lomb was in a lawsuit with Novartis which claimed to have patents on a Bausch + Lomb product called PureVision. On June 26, 2002, a federal judge ruled that Bausch & Lomb did infringe on Ciba Vision (a subsidiary of Alcon) patents.

On July 2, 2004, the company announced that it had licensed the intellectual property of Novartis. Bausch & Lomb will pay the Ciba Vision unit of Novartis a royalty on net U.S. sales of its PureVision brand contact lenses until 2014 and on net sales outside the U.S. until 2016. But as of now, the brand FreshLook comes under Bausch and Lomb and Ciba manufacturers it.

ReNu product recalls

Main article: ReNu

On April 11, 2006, Bausch & Lomb stopped shipments of its ReNu with MoistureLoc contact lens solution when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced there was a high correlation between use of the product and cases of suspected fungal keratitis. The Centers for Disease Control found that "nearly all of the company's ReNu with MoistureLoc eye care products were linked to severe fungal eye infections". Two class action lawsuits have been filed against Bausch & Lomb in relation to the eye fungus problems.

Diversity

Bausch & Lomb received a 100% rating on the Corporate Equality Index released by the Human Rights Campaign starting in 2003, the second year of the report.

Lawsuits

In 1994, several states in the US, including Texas, opened an investigation against Bausch & Lomb. This investigation was based on the sale of duplicate contact lenses under different names and prices. Three different versions of the same contact lens were being sold under OptimaFW, Medalist lenses, and SeeQuence2. OptimaFW, the most expensive version, was available with a lifetime of one year, The mid-priced, Medalist lenses were sold with a lifetime of three months, and SeeQuence2, the least expensive, came with a lifetime of two to three weeks. By 1996, the company ensured that all three versions carried the OptimaFW tag and tried to standardize the packaging, but the pricing was still different. In 1996, the case was settled for $68 million. In 1997, 17 states pressured Bausch & Lomb to stop the sale of duplicate lenses, deceptive practice stated in the court. The settlement also demanded the company to pay $1.7 million or $100,000 to each state to cover investigative costs.

In 2009, Bausch & Lomb spent $250 million to settle six hundred lawsuits filed by consumers exposed to Fusarium keratitis, a fungal infection, after using its contact solution ReNu with MoistureLoc. Between June 2005 and September 2006, one hundred eighty cases were reported, out of which seven patients required eye removal and sixty required corneal transplants.

External links

• Official website