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Eyeball Datapoint Of The Day

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by Felix Salmon
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Apr 07 2008 12:00am EDT

Eyeball Datapoint of the Day

Did you know that there was a $45 billion eyecare company called Alcon? I had no idea, until I saw that a controlling stake in it was being sold by one big Swiss company to another big Swiss company. On a financial level, it surprises me that shareholders don't have tagalong rights in this deal - do such things not exist in Switzerland? (Of course, since the sale price is significantly lower than the share price, they'd be unlikely to exercise those rights, but still.)

And on a valuation level, let's say that the population of the world is 6.6 billion, and let's exclude the "bottom billion" for the time being as people who are never going to avail themselves of Alcon's products. That leaves 5.5 billion people, with 11 billion eyeballs between them. Which would mean that Alcon is valued at over $4 per global eyeball. Nice.

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