B.C. billionaire wanting Bay leases doesn’t have cash to launch new chain: landlord

TORONTO — Hudson’s Bay landlords are back in court today, where they’re arguing a B.C. billionaire doesn’t have the cash needed to launch a new retailer.

Ruby Liu wants to buy 25 more leases for $69.1 million from the Bay to open a new department store named after herself. She already bought three Bay leases in malls she owns.

Liu intends to spend $400 million on opening the new chain but a lawyer for Bay landlord KingSett Capital says that money is “non-existent.”

Matthew Gottlieb says Liu won’t personally guarantee that $400 million and much of her remaining money is tied up in three international companies that haven’t signed binding commitments to back her new venture.

While she’s said the three B.C. malls she owns can be a source of funding, Gottlieb says Woodgrove Centre in Nanaimo, Mayfair Shopping Centre in Victoria and Tsawwassen Mills in Delta have collectively lost about $19 million in 2023 and 2024.

If her other companies had collected interest on loans they made to the malls, Gottlieb says the shopping centres would be insolvent.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 29, 2025.

Tara Deschamps, The Canadian Press