Bausch & Lomb Inc. is focusing on Orange County as the hub of its surgical eye business.
The linchpin of the move is Bausch’s buy earlier this year of Eyeonics Inc., an Aliso Viejo company that makes replacement lenses used in cataract surgeries.
Bausch is leasing space and consolidating its surgical unit here to prepare for the likely relocation of its eye surgical research and development operations. It’s also cutting jobs and re-evaluating its competitive strategy as Eyeonics is folded into the bigger company’s existing structure.
Bausch has signed a lease for office space at 30 Enterprise in Aliso Viejo, two blocks away from the legacy Eyeonics corporate office and across the street from Pacific Life Insurance Co.’s corporate office.
“It puts our surgical business right in the center of the heartbeat of where the ophthalmic innovation world resides,southern OC. This is where the action is,” said J. Andy Corley, the company’s OC-based global president of surgical products and Eyeonics’ cofounder and former chief executive.
Executives and support workers will be working in the new offices, and Corley said plans are to consolidate the company’s surgical research and development, “more than likely (into) Orange County.”
Corley took on his role in May. He’s spent 25 years in the ophthalmic industry and has held executive jobs at Santa Ana-based Advanced Medical Optics Inc. when it was part of Irvine-based Allergan Inc., and Chiron Ophthalmic Inc., a developer of laser eye surgery devices that he cofounded and eventually sold to Bausch.
“It’s been a very busy, busy time,” Corley said.
As part of the integration, Corley said that Warburg Pincus LLC, the private equity firm that bought Rochester, N.Y.-based Bausch for $3.6 billion and took it private last year, “took some of the Eyeonics management team into the Bausch & Lomb surgical business.”
The integration included merging sales forces, which Corley said was done a month after the deal closed.
It also included some job cuts, although Bausch spokesman Michael McDougall said the numbers weren’t large.
Additionally, Corley said merging the cultures “has been fun and frustrating.”
“Bausch & Lomb is a much bigger organization and they have the power of a big organization, which we didn’t have at Eyeonics, so we are certainly enjoying the global reach and distribution,” he said. “We are used to moving at lightning speed, but we don’t move quite as fast. That’s what I’m working on.”
Bausch sought Eyeonics, which had annual sales of about $40 million when it was bought, for its Crystalens replacement lens, which is used in people who have undergone cataract eye surgery.
Earlier this month, regulators cleared Crystalens HD, a fifth-generation version of the product.
“The Warburg team saw the value in what we were doing,” Corley said.
And they weren’t the only suitors, he said.
Bausch markets Crystalens for the cataract replacement lens market.
Bausch’s surgical business competes with giants, including Advanced Medical and Alcon Inc., a Nestl & #233; SA unit with some 670 workers in Irvine. Other companies that are involved in the intraocular (inside the eye) lens portion of Bausch’s market include Visiogen Inc. of Irvine.
“You can never, ever, ever stop innovating and improving your product,” Corley said. “My dad had a saying that ‘If I have to ask you for it, it’s too late,’ so we have to anticipate what the customer’s going to need.”
Besides Crystalens, Bausch sells other eye surgical products, including other intraocular lenses; phacoemulsification machines used to remove the eye’s natural lens during cataract surgery; viscoelastics, which are devices used to help the eye retain its shape during cataract surgery; and hand-held surgical instruments.
Bausch, before buying Eyeonics, was a key player in one of 2007’s hotter local health stories.
A year ago, Advanced Medical launched a $4.3 billion takeover bid for Bausch after approaching it at the end of 2006. Bausch directors had passed on Advanced Medical’s initial overtures, citing possible regulatory hurdles and apprehension about giving a rival a look at its books.
After several months of back-and-forth, Advanced Medical eventually dropped its bid for Bausch, clearing the way for Warburg Pincus to buy it and remove it from the public market.
