The billionaire owner of two Vancouver Island shopping malls has declared her intent to purchase the ailing Hudson’s Bay department store chain, outlining her plan in a series of videos posted on a Chinese social network.
Weihong Liu is chair of Central Walk, a Nanaimo-based company that owns Mayfair shopping centre in Victoria and Woodgrove Centre in Nanaimo.
She has been touring Hudson’s Bay flagship locations across the country, accompanied by Richmond-based videographer and real estate agent Linda Qin.
In a video posted Thursday by Qin on Chinese social network RedNote, Liu said she feels the sadness of Canadians who are witnessing the crumbling of one of the country’s oldest businesses and has decided to make a bid for the business.
“Everyone has a responsibility to unite and invigorate the retail industry, invigorate Canada and to solve the employment issues that are coming,” she said in Mandarin, adding that an economic crisis is coming for Canada. “If the Bay closes, we’ll be like Detroit — just ruins.”
In the video, Liu made her remarks standing in front of a whiteboard indicating plans to hold a news conference on April 18.
Qin told the Times Colonist by phone on Saturday that Liu is currently not taking interviews, but that announcements will be forthcoming. She wouldn’t confirm the April 18 news conference date.
The deadline for declaring the intention to purchase or invest in Hudson’s Bay’s remaining assets and intellectual properties is Monday, with actual bids due at the end of the month.
In a separate video posted March 28, Liu said she wants to buy “dozens” of stores, calling it an opportunity that will only come around once every 300 years.
Liu could not be reached for comment Saturday.
Canada’s oldest retailer is expected to close the vast majority of its stores this summer, causing thousands of job losses as liquidation sales wind up.
In June, 74 Hudson’s Bay, two Saks Fifth Avenue and 13 Saks Off Fifth stores are expected to close, including the two Bay stores in Mayfair and Woodgrove and the Island’s flagship store in downtown Victoria’s Bay Centre.
The company owes just under $1 billion to various creditors, of which $860,000 is to Central Walk, according to documents.
Charles Schell, a finance professor at Vancouver Island University, said the Ontario Superior Court judge presiding over the Hudson’s Bay creditor protection filing will be responsible for finding the best path to recovering money for the company’s secured creditors.
The Hudson’s Bay trademark and style could be “quite valuable,” but any attempt to fully buy out the company would likely mean the buyer will have to negotiate terms with every individual Hudson’s Bay store landlord.
None of the previous leases negotiated by Hudson’s Bay will remain valid after the company goes through the creditor protection process, he said.
“There are a lot of different landlords involved, so it’s a fairly tricky kind of purchase, even if you could,” said Schell, adding that only six stores are wholly owned by the company. “But I suppose it sounds like a great possibility.”
Liu moved to Canada in 2014 and maintains a home on Vancouver Island and a gated estate on the University Endowment Lands in Metro Vancouver.
She has recently become more open about her life, frequently featuring in videos on Chinese-language social platforms chronicling her life and role in running three major malls in B.C., which she says she does to help advertise her shopping mall businesses.
In another video, she says that becoming a Canadian has given her a new lease on life and that she swears to do what she can to make the country better.
“If I don’t do business, I’ll feel bored and then I’ll have depression,” she said in a video interview posted in February.
In addition to Mayfair mall and Woodgrove Centre, Liu’s company also owns the massive Tsawwassen Mills mall in the Lower Mainland and the Arbutus Ridge Golf Club in Cobble Hill.
The B.C. property purchases were made partly with the proceeds of the sale of a 1.5-million-square-foot Central Walk mall in Shenzhen, China that was sold in 2019 for the equivalent of C$1.25 billion.
Liu gives few interviews to Canadian media, preferring instead to directly work with video producers whose audiences cater towards Canada’s Chinese diaspora.
Last April, in a lengthy, four-part Youtube program put together by 56 Below TV, Liu denied rumours in the Chinese community that her Canadian businesses are a front for the Chinese Communist Party elite, that she was once a mistress of a high-level Communist official and that she’s related to a former high-ranking officer in the People’s Liberation Army Navy.
In the program, the former Shenzhen-based entrepreneur — who is known in the country for assaulting a female reporter with the Shenzhen Economic Daily after she questioned Liu’s business practices at a news conference in 2012 — strongly criticized China and its stagnant economy, saying that she now runs the risk of being arrested in the authoritarian country that she left a decade ago.
In a video, Liu, who was a leading member of many business organizations created by the Chinese Communist Party to advance the government’s international aims, also confirmed that she was previously in a top political advisory body in China, the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference.
— With files from the Vancouver Sun
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