Bausch & Lomb shares plunge on recall
Shares of Bausch & Lomb Inc. plunged 17 percent Tuesday, a day after the eye-care company voluntarily suspended shipments of a contact lens solution linked by federal health officials to a fungal eye infection that can cause temporary blindness.
The stock, which peaked at $87.89 in July after more than two years of robust growth, dipped $9.79 to $47.65 in morning trading on the New York Stock Exchange. Analysts were worried the news could hurt sales of the company’s other products and cut their ratings on the shares.
Bausch & Lomb, which also makes contact lenses, ophthalmic drugs and vision-correction surgical instruments, said late Monday it would temporarily suspend U.S. shipments of its ReNu with MoistureLoc contact lens solution made at its Greenville, S.C., plant.
Fungus symptoms can include blurry vision, pain or redness, increased sensitivity to light and excessive discharge from the eye. It is not transmitted from person to person.
•Ford Motor Co. said Tuesday that it was recalling nearly 20,000 Mustang Cobra sports cars after receiving complaints that the back of the accelerator pedal could become caught in the floor carpeting and lead to a crash.
Ford told the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in late January that it had received about 100 complaints and allegations of two crashes and one injury. The recall affects 19,140 Mustang Cobras from the 2003 and 2004 model years.
•The Internal Revenue Service won approval from a federal court to ask PayPal to turn over information about people who might be evading taxes by hiding income in other countries, officials said Tuesday.
A federal court in San Jose, Calif., gave the IRS permission to ask PayPal Inc. — a company that enables online money transfers — for account information for American taxpayers who have bank accounts, credit cards or debit cards issued by financial institutions in more than 30 countries reputed to be tax havens.
•Fidelity Investments and U.S. Trust Corp. have become the largest investors in United Airlines parent UAL Corp., new regulatory filings show, and now own one-fourth of the nation’s second-largest carrier based on revenue between them.
Fidelity bought just over 12 million shares last month for a 13 percent stake as of March 31, while U.S. Trust purchased 11.3 million shares and owns 12.2 percent of the company, according to filings Monday.