MONTREAL - The new owner of Hudson's Bay Co. has hired a unit of Brookfield Asset Management Inc. to shop some of its flagship downtown Bay stores and former headquarters to potential real estate buyers.
HBC spokeswoman Hillary Marshall confirmed the 338-year-old retail giant, bought by NRDC Equity Partners of Purchase, N.Y., last month, has engaged Brookfield Financial Real Estate Group to do a "big-picture analysis" of HBC's real-estate portfolio with an eye to selling it if values are good. The portfolio consists primarily of six downtown Bay stores and the 32-storey Toronto building that rises from its flagship 900,000-square-foot store and, until recently, served as its head office.
Brookfield Financial recently advised Canadian National Railway on the $355-million sale and leaseback of its down-town Montreal headquarters.
