Buzzapp Master 
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Taylor said Friday the company will continue to “work hard” to find a “more long-term solution” for its financial woes, but warned the window to achieve this “remains very short.”
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While the company carries out the work, it will start a sales process for assets like its leases and Canadians will see deals at stores set to be gutted.
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Whether they shop in person or online, they will find Hudson’s Bay has paused its loyalty program, which has 8.2 million Canadian members with about $58.5 million in unused points. It will stop accepting the $24.2 million outstanding gift cards consumers have after April 6.
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All sales will be final at the liquidating stores, Hudson’s Bay says.
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To arrive at a judgment, Osborne had to reconcile how the company could liquidate its inventory, pursue more financing and also seek a buyer for valuable assets like its leases or even the intellectual property associated with its name or stripes products.
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“I want to make sure we haven’t sold the jewels in the crown … so to make a better outcome impossible,” he said in court earlier this week, hours before he reserved his judgment for the day and urged the lawyers he had heard from to “lower the temperature.”
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The dozens of lawyers at proceedings over the course of the week represented everyone from elevator companies who Hudson’s Bay hadn’t paid to landlords.
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The property owners worried a liquidation wouldn’t just leave their malls and properties with enormous spaces to fill but would also hamper foot traffic to other tenants whose wares would become less attractive, when compared to the Bay’s reduced prices.
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Hudson’s Bay lawyer Taylor used his appearances to promise the company would “cast the net as wide as possible” to find backers who could salvage or rebuild the business.
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He said earlier this week that it had approached 19 lenders, but so far “the company’s efforts have failed,” necessitating liquidation.
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Andrew Hatnay, a lawyer representing employees, repeatedly told the court he felt the entire process was moving too quickly because the company moved from creditor protection to a full selloff in roughly a week.
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He didn’t see saving six stores as reason for celebration.
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“We will see how this works out but even … if they pull something out of their hat, stores are still going down,” he told the court. “That is not a good news story.”
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At stake, he said, were not just thousands of jobs, but benefits, pensions and severance. There are 21,000 past and present employees, spanning Hudson’s Bay, Saks Fifth Avenue and earlier acquisitions Simpsons, Kmart Canada and Zellers, in the pension plan, which court documents say is currently fully funded.
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Employees say they are not expecting severance, which Hatnay estimates could have amounted to a collective $100 million.
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“This is melancholy,“ he told the judge. ”This is the demise of HBC slowly but surely.”
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