Aug. 21, 2025 "Court monitor says it doesn’t support Hudson’s Bay plan to sell leases to Ruby Liu": Today I found this article by Tara Deschamps on BNN Bloomberg:
TORONTO — The court-appointed monitor overseeing Hudson’s Bay’s creditor protection case says it’s against landlords being forced to accept a B.C. billionaire’s plan to buy more than two dozen of the retailer’s leases.
In a new court filing made late Wednesday, Alvarez & Marsal said it
does not agree that landlords should have to take on Ruby Liu as a tenant
even though it says it supports the sales process that ended with her chosen to buy 28 of the Bay’s leases.
Liu purchased three Bay leases at B.C. malls that she owns for $6 million earlier this year,
but her deal to buy the other 25 for $69.1 million has faced opposition from one of the retailer’s biggest lenders and most of its landlords.
They say the leases don’t allow for the dining, entertainment and recreational spaces Liu has talked about opening within department stores she hopes to operate in the properties.
They also say Liu’s timelines and budgets are too unrealistic given the amount of work and repairs their properties need.
Liu says she doesn’t think the spaces need all of the repairs landlords are demanding because the Bay was operating in the spaces without the renovations.
If they are necessary, she says her company will do them, even if they exceed her current budget.
A court is expected to hear arguments from both sides next Thursday and Friday before judge Peter Osborne will rule on the matter.
Alvarez & Marsal was the last party involved with the leasing portion of the case to weigh in on Liu’s deal.
To reach its conclusion that Liu should not get the leases, the monitor reviewed her business plan and court filings from her, the Bay, lenders and landlords.
It also observed a recent cross-examination, where it said Liu testified that she was involved in preparing her business plan but does not speak English and admitted the document was not translated into Mandarin until shortly before the hearing.
“This reasonably raises concerns as to Ms. Liu’s involvement and understanding of the business plan,” the monitor said.
When it pored through all of the documentation and her statements, it determined that Central Walk, Liu’s company looking to buy the leases,
“is a start-up organization with
no existing operations,
no brand recognition,
and no track record as a retail business.”
The leadership team Liu put forward is similarly inexperienced and while she has looked to hire certain former Hudson’s Bay executives and managers, “those efforts remain incomplete,” the monitor said.
For example, it noted that Liu said in her cross-examination that she had retained former Bay president Wayne Drummond as a consultant but for only two days. She added he would not be part of her eventual operations, the monitor said.
Thus, Alvarez & Marsal concluded, “The overall lack of experience at the leadership level represents a risk to the operational viability of launching and managing 25 large department stores in the contemplated timeline.”
Liu hopes to open 19 of her 25 stores within six months of being assigned the leases. The remainder will open within 12 months.
She plans to spend $120 million on store repairs and renovations and has talked about getting inventory from merchandise management company J2.
However, Alvarez & Marsal’s report says the recent cross-examination revealed Liu no longer intends to use J2 to manage her supply chain and has not identified any other alternative.
The compressed timeline and amount of inventory she will need “represents a risk to the execution of the business plan,” the monitor ultimately found.
---
Tara Deschamps, The Canadian Press
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 21, 2025.
Aug. 22, 2025 "Hudson’s Bay lender say landlords fighting Ruby Liu because of ‘ulterior motives’": Today I found this article by Tara Deschamps on BNN Bloomberg:
TORONTO — Hudson’s Bay and one of its top lenders are accusing landlords of having “ulterior motives” for opposing a push to sell 25 leases to a B.C. billionaire.
In new court documents filed late Thursday, the defunct department store and lender Pathlight Capital LP argue that landlords don’t want Ruby Liu to buy the Bay leases because they’d rather have the properties returned to them to fill or redevelop as they wish.
The “strenuous campaign” the landlords are mounting against Liu is all about
“securing certain extraneous benefits for themselves”
rather than filling their properties
and helping the Bay repay creditors,
said the U.S. private credit investment manager still owed more than US$68.5 million.
The accusations form the latest salvo in a battle that has broken out between the Bay and the owners of the highly desirable properties it presided over for much of its 355-year-old history.
When the Bay collapsed under the weight of debt in March and had to file for creditor protection, it wound up liquidating all 80 of its stores and 16 more occupied by its sister Saks brands to recoup cash for creditors.
Then, it followed the standard path of selling assets, including its leases, to recoup as much cash for its lenders as possible.
Some 12 bidders went after a collective 39 leases. B.C. billionaire Ruby Liu’s Central Walk business was chosen by the Bay to buy the bulk of them.
Liu scooped up three at B.C. malls she owns for a collective $6 million, with the deal quickly getting court approval.
The remaining 25 she wants to buy for $69.1 million -- and her plan to turn them into department stores filled with entertainment, dining and recreational spaces -- have been hotly contested.
Landlords say Liu should not be able to move in because
the leases don’t allow for many of her intended uses
and her business plan is unrealistic within the short timelines she estimates needing.
They also say she is not backed by
the kind of cash
or experience
required to launch
and run a new department store.
Pathlight claims the landlords are objecting to Liu because they’d rather the leases be disclaimed -- a standard business procedure that sees properties turned back over to owners when the previous tenant finds no one willing or suitable to take over the lease.
Landlords were able to bid on their own leases.
The move would have helped them avoid a court forcing them to accept a tenant under the lease terms the Bay had.
The department store was the anchor tenant in many properties and thus,
had lower rents than the average retail occupant pays.
No landlords bid on their own leases.
“One could therefore reasonably assume that the objecting landlords’ objections have
less to do with Central Walk itself,
or any actual desire to find another department store they deem more suitable to act as a new anchor tenant,
and more to do with securing a means to reacquire their leases at no cost to themselves
and with no value flowing to the applicants’ estate,”
Pathlight said in court documents.
If they got control of their properties back, Pathlight argues landlords would be free of lease restrictions which limit how their spaces can be used.
It said several of the objecting landlords have plans to redevelop the Bay properties for
commercial,
office,
residential
and recreational uses.
The Bay agreed with Pathlight’s arguments.
In its own submission, it pointed out the leases Liu wants represent hundreds of millions of value and “a variety of concessions” that cannot be accessed by the objecting landlords while the Bay’s leases are in effect.
The retailer charged that the landlords always had designs to reject Liu and pointed out they have confirmed such. In court filings and cross-examinations the Bay said
landlords have admitted
“they would never agree to assign their leases to the purchaser -- no matter what business plan” Liu presented.
“One of the objecting landlords (QuadReal) did not even take a meeting with the purchaser despite repeated requests,” the Bay wrote.
Liu’s own filing made the same point and listed a number of ways she had been spurned by landlords.
She alleged some told her they already had redevelopment plans,
others attacked her credibility
and one ended an initial meeting with her after 10 minutes and refused follow-ups.
A court will hear these arguments next week at a hearing meant to determine whether Liu should be able to buy the leases.
The landlords have the support of the court monitor -- a third party that is overseeing the creditor protection case -- and another Bay lender, ReStore Capital.
ReStore has complained that the longer the Liu deal goes by without court approval,
the more futile its hopes of recovering what it is owed become.
At this point, ReStore estimates it will receive $12.5 million in proceeds if the Liu deal goes through, much less than if the deal had already gone ahead.
That compares with $11.7 million of its collateral ReStore says it has spent on rent between June and the end of August,
plus tens of millions of dollars in professional fees, while the transaction awaited approval.
ReStore said the Bay has “spent excessively” to “achieve nothing but a net reduction in (its) projected recovery.”
Corporate payroll and benefits have expanded by over 185 per cent or $18 million
and professional fees for the Bay and monitor have increased over 250 per cent,
or by an additional $29 million, for a total of $41 million, ReStore said.
---
Tara Deschamps, The Canadian Press
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 22, 2025.
My opinion: This part stood out to me as Lui exposes how the landlords are mistreating her:
"Liu’s own filing made the same point and listed a number of ways she had been spurned by landlords.
She alleged some told her they already had redevelopment plans,
others attacked her credibility
and one ended an initial meeting with her after 10 minutes and refused follow-ups."
This reminds me of my Mar. 2021 blog post:
"#MeToo movement becomes #WeToo in in victim-blaming Japan"/ "Outrage as women in Japan told not wear glasses in the workplace"
Aug. 17, 2020 Saying: I found this on Facebook:
"You never look good when you are trying to make someone else look bad."- Unknown
Cham: Sometimes people need to be exposed for who they are hahah or maybe I should stop being petty
Tracy Au: There's a difference between trying to make someone look bad, and exposing them for who they are. It's like those #MeToo accusers and victims, they are plainly telling everybody about the perpetrators. They're not trying to make them look bad.
https://badcb.blogspot.com/2020/08/job-articles-wetoo-gender-gap-done.html
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