Hudson’s Bay is returning its former stores to the owners, effectively ending BC billionaire Ruby Liu’s fight to take over the collapsed retailer’s leases.
Franco Perugini, senior vice president of real estate and legal affairs at HBC, said in an email Monday to The Canadian Press that the company is giving up leases it had for 25 properties Liu tried to buy.
A release is a legal mechanism that ends a lease before it expires and therefore frees the tenant from obligations such as paying rent or maintaining the property.
As long as no landlord objects to the liability waiver, Perugini says HBC’s leases will end on November 27.
Linda Qin, a spokeswoman for Liu, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the disclaimers.
HBC abandoned its 80 stores and 16 more under its Saks brand over the summer after filing for creditor protection and liquidating its merchandise.
When he put his leases up for sale, Liu stepped up to buy up to 28. He hoped to use them to open a new department store bearing his name.
British Columbia billionaire Ruby Liu hopes to expand her shopping center empire by acquiring 28 leases of former retail spaces in Hudson Bay. He joined CBC’s Gloria Macarenko with a translator to share his take on department stores, in his first interview with English-speaking media in Canada.
HBC agreed to the plan. He quickly obtained court approval to purchase three shopping centers he owned in BC: Woodgrove Centre, Mayfair Shopping Center and Tsawwassen Mills.
The remaining 25 were hotly contested by owners such as Cadillac Fairview, Oxford Properties and Ivanhoé Cambridge. They did not want to accept Liu, who was offering $69.1 million for the leases, as a tenant because they argued that her business plan was insufficient and that she was too inexperienced.
Liu maintained he had what it took to take over the leases and offered to invest millions in hiring, purchasing inventory and renovating to rehabilitate the sites.
HBC insisted that the sale go through. After all, it has a long list of creditors who were owed about $1.1 billion when its liquidation began and Liu was one of its best chances to recover some of that cash.
However, last month HBC lost the fight when a judge sided with the owners. He said he had “significant concerns” about Liu’s ability to meet the terms of the leases he wanted.
Following the ruling, HBC did not say whether it would appeal the decision, but the lease disclaimer indicates it will not continue fighting the sale.
Josh Burleton, a spokesman for Oxford Properties, said in an email Monday that HBC’s decision to waive the leases “brings some certainty to this long and expensive process and allows us to move forward.”
Oxford’s focus during HBC’s liquidation has always been to protect its assets because they support employees and pensioners, he said.
Oxford is the real estate division of the Ontario Municipal Employees’ Retirement System, which administers the pensions of more than 600,000 plan members.
