Eye care company Bausch & Lomb files for IPO

Proposed IPO could raise as much as $1.5 bn and is expected to value firm at $9 bn to $10 bn

Eye care company Bausch & Lomb Holdings Inc, owned by private equity firm Warburg Pincus, filed with U.S. regulators to raise upto $100 million in an initial public offering.

The proposed IPO could raise as much as $1.5 billion and is expected to value Bausch & Lomb at about $9 billion to $10 billion, Reuters reported earlier in March.

In a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday, the company said J.P.Morgan, BofA Merrill Lynch and Citigroup were the lead underwriters of the offering. (https://bsmedia.business-standard.comlink.reuters.com/keh86t)

Warburg Pincus continues to explore a private sale of the company and is working with Goldman Sachs to find a buyer, a source had told Reuters.

Founded in 1853, Rochester, New York-based Bausch & Lomb makes contact lenses, eye drugs and surgical equipment and sells its products in more than 100 countries.

It was taken private by Warburg Pincus in 2007 for about $4.5 billion, including $830 million of debt, after it fell out of Wall Street's favor because of product recalls, big charges and restatements of earnings. Warburg Pincus committed over $1 billion of equity toward the buyout.

The filing did not reveal how many shares would be on sale or their expected price.

The amount of money a company says it plans to raise in its first IPO filings is used to calculate registration fees. The final size of the IPO could be different.

(Reporting by Jochelle Mendonca in Bangalore; Editing by Supriya Kurane)