Here Lies Hudson’s Bay Company, Murdered by Private Equity
Here Lies Hudson’s Bay Company, Murdered by Private Equity
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.
Here Lies Hudson’s Bay Company, Murdered by
Private Equitythe same greed it was born fromAs an indigenous person who grew up under the shadow of this company. As a boy, I saw my trapper father trade his last furs with the company just before the fur trade industry collapsed in the late 70s. Even as a boy I saw how much work my parents put into processing a dozen furs in exchange for not much money. And this had happened to my family for generations!!!
HBC was made possible by directly exploiting indigenous people for 300 years. They basically owned the land where my family lived. Which meant they could do business in whatever way they wanted with my ancestors. They bought furs for the cheapest prices that could barely sustain the lives of the people they paid. Then resold the furs for enormous profit in Europe. They did that for almost 200 years without any regulation or control which meant it built them one of the biggest corporations in the world ...... all In the backs of indigenous people who had nothing much to live on.
Fuck the HBC ...... it's a beautiful thing to see that terrible name taken down and destroyed.
This perspective is really important. A lot of us see HBC as a sort of national symbol and we often ignore the exploitation that led to its prominence. Thanks for sharing.
HBC has a dark history but in modern form, it could have also provided important competition to Amazon. Apologies are in order nonetheless.
Aside: it’s amazing how HBC, Sears, etc. had successful mail-order/catalog businesses before Amazon came along and built a mail-order system on the internet - and completely threw away their lead.
The PE firm should be required to liquidate assets in order to pay the severance owed to the employees. It is a moral failure of the government and society to allow them to get away without paying.
That's the thing, the PE firm already sold the major assets (the real estate) to themselves and leased it back to HBC. It's their standard playbook.
Exactly; the money is there but the PE leeches get to keep it all. “But bankruptcy” get the money or put the principals in prison, and work down the investor list.
The real modern competitor to Amazon could have been Consumers Distributing.
but in modern form, it could have also provided important competition to Amazon.
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.
Private equity lies at the heart of the Bay’s collapse. In 2008, US-based NRDC Equity Partners bought the Bay just as brick-and-mortar retailers began to reckon with the rise of e-commerce. Today the Bay is blaming the pandemic, the US-Canada trade war, and a broader decrease in department store traffic for its decline — but sharper eyes see through the excuses. Before the closure, and after the Bay’s private equity capture, experts were noting a “lack of investment” in the retail stores themselves. One professor went so far as to call the Bay’s purchase by NRDC “the point at which the company began its slow death.”
Private equity is capitalism's version of a serial killer. Governments should be regulating it but they won't since too many politicians have been bought out.
Such a failure to allow this to die. It had a dark past, but they played a pivotal role in the history of our country.
I've seen it suggested that it be made a crown corporation operated by indigenous people to provide staple food and other necessities at reasonable prices. Im on board with that idea.
HBC is a dinosaur, and it went the way of dinosaurs. The brand name still has value, and someone may resurrect it, in some form. Who still remembers Simpsons the store before the show?
Canadian Tire is buying the intellectual property (essentially, the brand) for an absolute steal at $30m. https://globalnews.ca/news/11210165/hudsons-bay-court-canadian-tire-deal-approval/
CT has the money and manufacturing, and distribution to continue to make Hudson's Bay products. I would expect to see things like blankets, socks, and outdoor wear begin to appear at Marks, housewares also in CT stores. Heck, the CT corporation is so big they could just open Bay and Zellers stores if they wanted (with adjusted business plans, of course).