The Bay’s landlords are suing HBC over their multimillion-dollar legal battle with Ruby Liu

Canada’s largest landlords are looking to squeeze $2.4 million out of the defunct Hudson’s Bay Company, claiming that it should pay the legal costs for the long, drawn-out battle with Chinese billionaire Ruby Liu.

Related: The Battle for the Bay—How the country’s oldest corporation came to its bitter end

Back in March of 2025, the venerable Bay ran out of steam after more than 350 years of operation and entered into creditor protection, selling off everything it could to pay down its $900 million in debt. On the auctioning block were its leases in malls across Canada and the rights to operate in its big, well-located commercial spaces.

The most confident bidder by far was Weihong “Ruby” Liu, a Chinese Canadian billionaire who owned three malls in BC, each of which housed a Bay location, and wanted the leases for 25 more. She offered the Bay’s parent company, HBC, $69 million for them, and it quickly accepted.

Less enthused, however, were Liu’s prospective landlords, which included Ivanhoe Cambridge, Cadillac Fairview, Primaris Management and QuadReal Property—the largest power players in Canadian commercial real estate. For one thing, they had their own ideas for those spaces: the Bay had rented them out on highly favourable terms, negotiated back when the department store made the mall.

Related: Yorkdale is doing everything it can to keep a Fairweather store from opening

Those days are gone, and the Bay’s big, empty spaces seemed like prime candidates for mixed-use development—the new money play in modern real estate. If the landlords could quash Liu’s bid, they would both rid themselves of a demanding tenant and get their real estate back for free.

Those landlords were also burned by the Bay, which had stopped paying rent in its final months of business, and were wary of getting screwed again. The leases Liu was taking over had terms stretching into the 2090s, and if the landlords were going to take her on, they would need firm proof that she would be able to pay.

Unfortunately for everyone, Liu’s bid was anything but clear. When, in June of 2025, she sat down for business meetings with the landlords’ top executives, it quickly became clear that she had very little in terms of a business plan. The most the property barons could gather was that Liu wanted to build a mini-mall inside their own malls—and was workshopping the idea live on Chinese social media.

Related: Bad news for Ruby Liu and her Bay 2.0 master plan

The court gave the landlords just seven days to approve or deny Liu’s bid, but after much complaining, they managed to get that period extended through the summer and added on a full cross-examination of Liu and her would-be business. As those proceedings went on, it came out that even HBC was chafing at Liu’s blasé attitude.

It therefore came as a surprise to no one when, in October, the court refused Liu’s bid. The landlords were victorious: they got all their spaces back, lease-free, to do what they wanted with. That makes this latest request a bit rich: all that finagling with Liu, they’re saying, cost them $2.4 million in legal fees, and they want that money back.

Fair, perhaps, in principle. But, compared with the hefty sum they’re about to make by redeveloping the properties, that’s petty cash.