The Financial Post reports in its Friday edition that Valeant Pharmaceuticals had a small window in which to clinch one of the biggest deals of the year. The Post's Armina Ligaya writes that if Valeant waited another two more weeks, the company's chance to snap up eye-care specialist Bausch + Lomb for $8.7-billion may have disappeared. In the end Valeant, pulled off a deal that solidified its position in the consumer products space while giving its stock a tidy 10-per-cent bump on the announcement. Before the acquisition was announced in May, Warburg Pincus, Bausch + Lomb's owner, was close to taking the maker of contact lenses and solution back on the public market. The Valeant deal scuttled the planned IPO and beat out rumoured interest from rival suitors, such as Johnson & Johnson and Abbott Laboratories. Bausch + Lomb's owners were "only a couple of weeks away" from completing the initial public offering when Valeant came calling, says Robert Davis, a New York lawyer who handled the file for Warburg Pincus. Documents were already filed ahead of the IPO. Valeant's Michael Pearson had been eyeing B + L for years but once the decision was made to move ahead, the acquisition came together quickly.