Campeau Corporation was a Canadian

real estate development Real estate development, or property development, is a business process, encompassing activities that range from the renovation and re-lease of existing buildings to the purchase of raw Real Estate, land and the sale of developed land or parcels ...

and investment company founded by entrepreneur

Robert Campeau Robert Joseph Antoine Campeau (August 3, 1923 June 12, 2017) was a Canadian financier and real estate developer. Starting from a single house constructed in 1940 in the Alta Vista neighbourhood of Ottawa, Ontario, Campeau built a large land dev ...

. It was infamous from its ultimately unsuccessful acquisitions of American

department store A department store is a retail establishment offering a wide range of consumer goods in different areas of the store, each area ("department") specializing in a product category. In modern major cities, the department store made a dramatic app ...

holding companies

Allied Stores Allied Stores was a department store chain in the United States. It was founded in the 1930s as part of a general consolidation in the retail sector by B. E. Puckett. See also Associated Dry Goods. It was the successor to Hahn's Department Store ...

in 1986 and

Federated Department Stores Macy's, Inc. (originally Federated Department Stores, Inc.) is an American conglomerate holding company. Upon its establishment, Federated held ownership of the regional department store chains Abraham & Straus, Lazarus, Filene's, and Shillito ...

in 1988. The whole organization soon was mired in bankruptcy and spurred the decline of the regional department store.

History

Synonymous with its founder,

Ottawa Ottawa (, ; Canadian French: ) is the capital city of Canada. It is located at the confluence of the Ottawa River and the Rideau River in the southern portion of the province of Ontario. Ottawa borders Gatineau, Quebec, and forms the core ...

-based Campeau was able to construct both office complexes and residential subdivisions to accommodate Canada's rapidly expanding

civil service The civil service is a collective term for a sector of government composed mainly of career civil servants hired on professional merit rather than appointed or elected, whose institutional tenure typically survives transitions of political leaders ...

. Campeau Corporation had two main rivals in the residential housing market: Assaly Construction Limited and Minto Developments Inc., the latter owned by the family of future Ottawa mayor

Lorry Greenberg Lawrence "Lorry" Greenberg (31 December 1933 – 30 June 1999) was Mayor of Ottawa, Ontario from 1975 to 1978. He graduated from Lisgar Collegiate in 1952. He was one of the founding members of Minto Developments Inc., but left the compa ...

. For many years, it was city policy in Ottawa that buildings in the downtown core not be taller than the ''

Peace Tower The Peace Tower (french: link=no, Tour de la Paix) is a focal bell and clock tower sitting on the central axis of the Centre Block of the Canadian parliament buildings in Ottawa, Ontario. The present incarnation replaced the Victoria Tower af ...

'' of the parliament buildings. Campeau found this rule to be unnecessary and was drawn into conflict with city council over large high-rise developments such as

Place de Ville Place de Ville is a complex of office towers in downtown Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. It consists of four office buildings: Place de Ville A, B, and C; and the 'Podium' building, which houses a shuttered "piggy-back" cinema enveloped with functiona ...

. Campeau's real estate development success soon spread outside Ottawa. In Toronto, its notable developments included Scotia Tower (the city's second-tallest skyscraper) and the Harbour Castle Hotel (now part of the

Westin Hotels Westin Hotels & Resorts is an American upscale hotel chain owned by Marriott International. , the Westin Brand has 226 properties with 82,608 rooms in multiple countries in addition to 58 hotels with 15,741 rooms in the pipeline. History Wester ...

chain) - which helped revitalize the city's waterfront area.

Acquisitions

In the 1980s, Campeau embarked on a series of

leveraged buyout A leveraged buyout (LBO) is one company's acquisition of another company using a significant amount of borrowed money (leverage) to meet the cost of acquisition. The assets of the company being acquired are often used as collateral for the loan ...

s, first bidding unsuccessfully on the

Royal Trustco The Royal Trust Company is a Canadian trust company that was founded in 1892 in Montreal, Quebec. By the late 20th century, it carried out trust, financial, real estate and deposit services in over 100 branches in Canada, the U.S. and overseas. I ...

(now owned by

Royal Bank of Canada Royal Bank of Canada (RBC; french: Banque royale du Canada) is a Canadian multinational financial services company and the largest bank in Canada by market capitalization. The bank serves over 17 million clients and has more than 89,000& ...

). Its founder's brash, confrontational manner made him an outsider to much of the conservative Canadian business establishment. As his empire expanded, Campeau ventured into the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

, looking for acquisitions that would add shopping mall real estate to his portfolio of assets. In 1986, Campeau acquired

. In 1988, the company followed with the purchase of

, owner of

Bloomingdale's Bloomingdale's Inc. is an American luxury department store chain; it was founded in New York City by Joseph B. Bloomingdale, Joseph B. and Lyman G. Bloomingdale in 1861. A third brother, Emanuel Watson Bloomingdale, was also involved in the bus ...

. Campeau retained banker

Bruce Wasserstein Bruce Jay Wasserstein (December 25, 1947 – October 14, 2009) was an American investment banker, businessman, and writer. He was a graduate of the McBurney School, University of Michigan, Harvard Business School, and Harvard Law School, and spe ...

to assist with the transactions. The purchases were criticized by ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'', which noted "recent LBO's benefited the target companies' shareholders who received high takeover prices. But most of the gains seemed to have come at the expense of bondholders, creditors and employees." In the late 1980s, the debt obligations that needed to be covered following the merger were too large, and exacerbated by a market downturn that hurt retail sales. Campeau Corporation was unable to meet its debt obligations. Federated and Allied eventually filed for bankruptcy reorganization. The company was eventually acquired by

Olympia and York Olympia & York (also spelled as Olympia and York, abbreviated as O&Y) was a major international property development firm based in Toronto, Canada. The firm built major financial office complexes including Canary Wharf in London, the World Fina ...

who went bankrupt, and Campeau Corporation ceased to exist.

References

External links

Costa Rica Real EstateKenora Real Estate News
{{Authority control Home builders Real estate companies of Canada Defunct companies of Ontario Companies that have filed for bankruptcy in Canada Private equity firms of Canada Companies based in Ottawa Construction and civil engineering companies of Canada Defunct real estate companies