Milan Panic

Panic emigrated from Yugoslavia to the United States and founded ICN Pharmaceuticals in California in 1959, building it from a garage operation into a New York Stock Exchange-listed company with sales in about 90 countries at its peak. He also served as prime minister of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1992 and 1993 and ran against Slobodan Milosevic for the Serbian presidency.

Milan Panic ran ICN Pharmaceuticals for four decades and made it known for the broad-spectrum antiviral ribavirin, sold as Virazole. His tenure was also marked by repeated governance disputes, and shareholders removed him in 2002; the company took the Valeant Pharmaceuticals name the following year and later merged with Canada's Biovail to form what is now Bausch Health. Panic died in Pasadena, California on September 24, 2026. The other half of the group's identity is older still: Bausch + Lomb was founded in Rochester, New York in 1853 by the German immigrants John Jacob Bausch and Henry Lomb, went on to make Ray-Ban sunglasses and the SofLens soft contact lens in 1971, was bought by Valeant for $8.7B in 2013, and supplied the corporate name adopted in 2018. Milan Panic was born in 1932.