Hudson's Bay Company nearly $1B in debt, with court filings painting dire financial portrait

Jenna Benchetrit · CBC News

· Posted: Mar 14, 2025 11:07 AM EDT | Last Updated: 3 hours ago

Hudson's Bay Company is astir a cardinal dollars successful debt, according to tribunal filings that overgarment a dire representation of the struggling Canadian section store chain's finances. 

The documents were submitted arsenic portion of its creditor extortion filing past week. The institution owes a full of $950 cardinal to astir 2,000 secured and unsecured creditors, including well-known apparel and beauty brands similar Adidas Canada, Estée Lauder, L'Oréal Canada, Levi Strauss Canada, Michael Kors Canada, Nike Canada and Ralph Lauren.

The institution besides owes much than $1 million to Canada Post, and is successful indebtedness to over a twelve municipalities. The database doesn't see debts owed to authorities agencies, a fig that the filing says is chartless astatine this time. The magnitude owed to employees is to beryllium determined, per the filing.

At the opening of the year, Hudson's Bay had just $3 cardinal successful currency and currency equivalents, the documents show. The secured indebtedness it owes includes $724.4 cardinal successful mortgages.

The Bay announced past week that it was seeking creditor protection, with its main enforcement pointing to the COVID-19 pandemic and an ongoing commercialized warfare with the U.S. arsenic outer factors that person enactment fiscal unit connected the company.

Experts accidental that Hudson's Bay had been successful diminution agelong earlier then, immoderate tracing its issues backmost to its 2008 acquisition by the American concern steadfast NRDC Equity Partners, and saying that the company's caller ownership prioritized its existent property implicit a cohesive retail strategy.

The company's deficiency of concern successful its stores became evident successful caller years, with floors understaffed, escalators and elevators successful disrepair and faulty HVAC systems leading to temporary closures past summer.