Latest Headlines – Page 171
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Alcon Shows Good Growth
Alcon's sales increased by 16.1 percent during the 4th quarter of 2006 to $1,224.9 million, or 13.5 percent in constant dollars. Adjusted net earnings for the quarter were $354.7 million, up from $257.9 million for the same period in 2005 on a comparable basis. However, extraordinary accounting-related charges had pushed ...
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Mido Will Add An Extra Hall
The demand for new exhibition space at MIDO's modern new venue at Rho-Pero, near Milan, has been so big that the show has decided to add a seventh hall to those that it had already rented out for the event, scheduled to run for four days starting on May 4, ...
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Optrafair Attracts New Exhibitors, Expands Education Program
The Manufacturers' Pavilion at the next Optrafair in the UK, taking place next Apr. 21-23 at the NEC fairgrounds in Birmingham, has attracted Premiere Optical and other firms to the show for the first time. The show is offering turnkey booths in this new area of the biennial British exhibition ...
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Specslab.Com Launches A Franchising Scheme For Europe, And The Usa Is Near
Specslab.com is a new mobile low-cost retail operation for prescription glasses that started up in the UK last spring, focusing mainly on corporate clients and using a central server and the internet to place orders, to carry out the administrative work and to handle the logistics. The initiators of the ...
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Signature Pledges To Recover Lost Sales Momentum
Signature Eyewear, which celebrates its 25th anniversary this year, has told the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that it will grow again this year by expanding sales of sunglasses, which are its strongest segment, to U.S. department stores and sunglass stores. The new Cutter & Buck line, which was introduced ...
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British Parliamentarians Want The State To Refund Patients For Lucentis
The European Union and the regulatory authorities of Norway and Iceland have all approved the sale of Lucentis, the apparently miraculous drug developed by Genentech to treat wet aged-related macular degeneration. Tests have shown that 68 percent of the patients treated with Lucentis have seen an improvement in their condition ...
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Bridgepoint Acquires Rodenstock's Control From Permira At A Premium
The control of Rodenstock is moving from one equity fund to another. Permira, which acquired 49 percent of the venerable German eyewear company from Randolf Rodenstock in June 2003, raising its stake subsequently to 85 percent, has sold it now to Bridgepoint, apparently with a big capital gain that it ...
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Essilor Buys Novacel, But It May Be After Bigger Prey With Coopervision
In conference calls in French and English organized earlier today to comment on its excellent financial results, Essilor's management declined to comment on a rumor in a French magazine that it is about to launch a bid for Cooper Companies, one of the four major players in the contact lens ...
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Essilor Sees Ebit Margin Of Close To 17.8% On Organic Sales Growth Of 8.1%
The profit figures for 2006 have not yet come out, but the management of Essilor says its operating margin for the 2nd half of the year was substantially higher than the 16.9 percent margin scored in the same period of 2005 and close to the 17.8 percent margin achieved in ...
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Hoya And Pentax Merge
The merger does not include Pentax Corp.'s ophthalmic lens business, which was bought by Seiko about two years ago, but it comprises Pentax' medical optics operations. Covering intraocular lenses, endoscopes, medical accessories and new ceramics, this business unit of Pentax will be merged with Hoya Corp.'s activities in this area, ...
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Ciba Vision Recalls Some Spheres, Affecting Novartis' Results
CIBA Vision is undertaking a voluntary recall of selected lots of spherical O2 Optix (lotrafilcon B) contact lenses at the trade level, according to a statement issued by the company, adding that it had notified proper health authorities. No other products are being affected by the recall. The move, which ...
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Luxottica Books Third Year Of Double-digit Sales Growth In 2006
Luxottica booked a third consecutive year of double-digit growth in 2006, although the pace slowed down in the fourth quarter due to the weakening of the dollar. Full-year consolidated sales rose 13.0 percent to €4.671 billion and would have risen 13.8 percent at constant foreign exchange rates. Retail ...
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Danish Buying Group Splits From Synoptik
Nyt Syns, a Danish buying group with 90 affiliated stores that claims a market share of 13-15 percent in the country's optical retailing market, has bought back the 50 percent stake in the buying and franchising company that it has sold to Synoptik in 2003, before that chain was acquired ...
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The German Eyewear Industry Reaches Record Levels
The German consumer optics industry raised its total revenues by 12.7 percent in 2006, according to Spectaris, the German optical, medical and mechanical industries association, which gave the figures last Monday in view of the Opti-München fair opening tomorrow. An executive of Spectaris, which got the figures from the Federal ...
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Fewer Britons Are Getting Private Eye Exams And Re-glazing Their Glasses
An annual survey by the UK's Federation of Ophthalmic and Dispensing Opticians (FODO) found that only 9 percent of the customers of member opticians got their spectacles re-glazed instead of buying a new pair with new lenses in the 12-month period ended March 31, 2006, down from 12 percent in ...
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The Country Of Origin Is Not That Important In Our Sector
No wonder that the eyewear industry associations of Italy, France and other European countries have not joined similar associations in the footwear or furniture sectors in demanding a mandatory label of origin for certain consumer products imported into the European Union. Such regulations are in place in the USA and ...
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The Return Of Oliver Goldsmith
Fresh off winning a style award in Japan for its eyewear, Oliver Goldsmith was taking a crack at expanding in Europe at last Fall's SILMO. The British company sells mostly in the UK as well as in Japan, where much of its eyewear is manufactured and where it has connections ...
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One More Scandinavian Retail Group Sees The Light
The concentration process across national boundaries is accelerating in the Scandinavian retail trade, where the national markets are relatively small for the local retail groups to carry weight in their negotiations with the major suppliers. After the launch of Nordic Optical Partners and of Optical Fashion Group, which we put ...
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Salmoiraghi And Vision Service Unite Their Purchasing Power
Salmoiraghi & Vigano, Italy's largest integrated optical retail chain, and Vision Service, one of the country's major buying groups, will join forces to negotiate more favorable terms with their suppliers as from 2007. They formed at the end of last month a consortium, called Kentral, as the central purchasing structure ...
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A Spanish Group Joins Another Italian Purchase Venture
At the end of last year two other Italian buying groups, Free Optik and Optotrades, set up a joint purchasing organization, called F&O, whose structure is slightly different from the Kentral consortium. Two other groups ? one Italian and the other one Spanish ? have now joined this entity, whose ...
