Court approves $18M sale of 350-year-old HBC royal charter to Thomsons,

Two of Canada’s wealthiest families have cleared the final hurdle on the road to buying and donating the royal charter that created the Hudson’s Bay Co.

Ontario Superior Court Judge Peter Osborne gave the shuttered retailer permission Thursday to sell the 355-year-old document to holding companies belonging to the Thomson and Weston families for $18 million.

The families plan to donate the charter immediately and permanently to the Archives of Manitoba, the Manitoba Museum, the Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau, Que., and the Royal Ontario Museum.

Each of the organizations has already agreed to accept the charter, which was issued by King Charles II on May 2, 1670, and allowed for the creation of HBC, which was then a fur-trading business.

The five-page vellum document was pivotal for the country, because it granted HBC control over one-third of modern Canada during its colonization, centuries before Confederation.

It was put up for auction because Hudson’s Bay filed for creditor protection in March and has since closed all of its stores; the defunct company has been selling off its trove of 4,400 pieces of art and artifacts to pay back those owed money.

Osborne approved Thursday an extension of HBC’s creditor protection period to March 31.

The Thomsons, who made their money in the media business, and the Westons, who are giants in the grocery and retail world, were the lone bidders in the charter auction, but a court had to approve their joint purchase before it could take place.

The court approval of the charter’s sale ends a saga that has kept HBC lawyers and financial advisers busy for months.

They initially planned to auction off the document before Weston firm Wittington Investments Ltd. stepped forward in July with a $12.5-million offer to buy the charter and donate it to the Canadian Museum of History, a Crown corporation.

HBC was prepared to accept the Weston offer, but then David Thomson’s firm DKRT Family Corp. argued it had been waiting for an auction to make its own $15-million starting bid. It wanted the Archives of Manitoba to own the charter.

HBC decided to revert back to the auction plan and let Thomson make the opening bid, until both families teamed up to make an $18-million bid.

Reflect Advisors, HBC’s financial advisers, reached out to 150 people or companies to see if they would top the bid. HBC said no one was willing, making the Thomson and Weston bid the de facto winner.

“Reflect did its utmost to try to generate a competitive auction but, when we finally got to that point, in light of the joint bid and the increased purchase price, no one else wanted to participate,” HBC lawyer Ashley Taylor said in court Thursday.

Nevertheless, “We were left, I think, in a very good place,” he said.

Asad Moten, a lawyer for…