Bausch Health Companies Inc. has long been considering strategic options for its eye health business. But now that it has paid down $8 billion in debt and divested $4 billion in non-core assets, it expects that the time is now right to spin out the eye health business as a separate publicly traded entity.

Even as the volume of mergers and acquisitions in 2019 reached the highest level in the last 10 years, multiple big pharma companies are looking to get smaller, spinning off units into separate entities.