Bausch & Lomb to acquire medical device company eyeonics, inc.

- The Canadian Press

01/20/2008 - Bausch & Lomb announced Sunday that the eye health company plans to acquire eyeonics, inc., a privately held California company that makes a special lens used in cataract repair.

Rochester-based Bausch & Lomb did not disclose financial terms. The transaction is expected to close in the first quarter.

Eyeonics is based in Aliso Viejo, Calif.

Once acquired, eyeonics will be wrapped into Bausch & Lomb's surgical business, the company said. The U.S. surgical business will be led by J. Andy Corley, eyeonics' co-founder, chairman and chief executive officer, it said.

Eyeonics, founded in 1998, developed and markets the crystalens intraocular lens, which has been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of cataracts. The intraocular lens replaces the eye's natural lens and has been implanted in more than 95,000 eyes worldwide.

In 2007, eyeonics generated revenues of approximately $34 million.

Bausch & Lomb has been in business more than 150 years. The company makes contact lenses, ophthalmic drugs and vision-correction surgical instruments.

In May 2006 the company was rocked by the worldwide recall of a lens solution blamed for a flurry of potentially blinding fungal infections. The company has said it was named as a defendant in more than 550 product-liability lawsuits stemming from the recall.

Federal regulators called the $100 million-a-year ReNu with MoistureLoc multipurpose cleaner the "potential root cause" of an outbreak of Fusarium keratitis infections in the United States, Asia and other parts of the world.

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