Hudson’s Bay Company, Canada’s oldest retailer, didn’t die of natural causes — it was gutted by private equity. Stripped of assets and loaded with debt, it leaves behind job losses, endangered pensions, and a hollowed-out legacy reduced to branding rights.
No, it couldn’t.
Hbc sold most of its real estate holdings by the 60s and 70s. It was already dead by the 80s when they couldn’t adapt to malls, it was even more dead in the 90s when it refused to ditch the “department store” approach.
By the time private equity got hold of it in 2008, there was almost nothing left.