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.
A Hudson’s Bay department store in downtown Toronto, Canada, on May 31, 2025. (Mike Campbell / NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Canada’s oldest company is dead. Hudson’s Bay, an iconic department store chain whose first location opened in 1881, has closed its retail shops and laid off its remaining employees — over 8,300 of them. The closures bring an end to a story that stretches back to the seventeenth century and the early days of the colonial project of British North America, the fur trade, and what would later become the country of Canada.
Today workers and former executives of the Bay are struggling to get a share of what they’re owed by the company, including, in some cases, their pensions. The company had recently sought creditor protection, hoping to limp along and perhaps recover. Soon after, it announced it was closing for good, owing roughly CAD$1 billion to creditors.
Who Gets What Now?
In April, the Bay told former senior executives that their pensions under its supplementary executive retirement plan would be cut. As the Globe and Mail reports, the supplementary executive pension fund wasn’t fully pre-funded and, under Canadian law, receives less protection than a standard, registered pension fund. As of 2022, the fund was short $84.5 million.
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