Many Canadian companies are far smaller than global giants such as Amazon, yet an important shift is underway: well-known Canadian brands increasingly behave like portfolios of financial assets rather than pure producers of goods and services. While consumers tend to think of companies in terms of the products and services they buy, many firms now prioritize accounting and tax strategies designed to return capital to shareholders. This shift—where companies emphasize financial returns over investment in production—is known as financialization and is a defining feature of modern global capitalism.
Greta Krippner, a scholar at the University of Michigan, describes financialization as “a pattern of accumulation in which profit making occurs increasingly through financial channels rather than through trade and commodity production.” This framing helps explain why long-standing Canadian brands have moved from being core producers to managers of diverse asset portfolios, including real estate, loyalty programs, and financial services.
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The Hudson’s Bay: Canada’s original monopolist
The history of The Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) illustrates financialization clearly. Once a dominant fur trader and mercantile network, HBC evolved over centuries and was acquired by an American private equity firm in 2008. Today, it is privately owned by Richard Baker, who serves as governor and chairman. While many Canadians think of Hudson’s Bay as a retail icon rooted in national trade history, its current leadership positions the firm primarily as a holder of valuable assets—especially real estate—rather than a traditional department store.
In 1670, the [British] Royal Charter granted HBC a trading monopoly over the territories that contained rivers that flowed into Hudson Bay. That control was eventually extended from Labrador to the Pacific, from the Pacific Northwest to the Arctic Ocean, an area approximating one twelfth of the Earth’s land mass.
Baker has publicly said the retail side represents only a fraction of the company’s value, framing HBC as “an investment company at the crossroads of real estate, operating companies and digital companies.” In practical terms, Hudson’s Bay today combines physical retail stores with brands like Saks and Home Outfitters, private-label merchandise, a branded credit card, a rewards program, and an online marketplace. The digital marketplace can promote HBC’s own brands ahead of third-party sellers and use loyalty incentives—such as Hudson’s Bay Rewards—to encourage higher spending.
Surviving intense competition from global retailers such as Amazon, Walmart, and Costco has forced many traditional retailers to diversify revenue streams. HBC now manages a mix of financial and physical assets intended to boost profitability. As a result, ownership resides increasingly outside Canada, shareholders include institutional investors, and corporate value is tied to the marketable worth of assets rather than to purely consumer-facing production.
This transformation is not unprecedented. Ray Kroc, the founder of McDonald’s, famously reframed his business as a real estate enterprise rather than merely a hamburger chain. HBC’s modern identity follows that logic: the company acts like an investment enterprise whose value is realized through property holdings, digital channels, and the strategic combination of operating companies.
Canadian Tire: Much more than a retailer
Canadian Tire is another example of a familiar Canadian retailer that has grown into a multi-faceted business. Through acquisitions—such as Mark’s (formerly Mark’s Work Wearhouse), Party City, Helly Hansen, and SportChek—the company has built an ecosystem that spans retail, automotive services, fuel retailing, financial services, and specialty brands. This diversification strengthens the company’s competitive position and creates multiple revenue streams beyond the signature storefronts.
One distinctive legacy of Canadian Tire is its loyalty currency—originally paper “Canadian Tire money,” introduced in 1958. That novelty helped create strong customer habits and brand loyalty. Today, that system has evolved into digital loyalty and a broader suite of financial services: Canadian Tire Bank (chartered under the Banking Act since 2003) issues credit cards, offers insurance products, and powers the Triangle Rewards program, which replaced the paper currency. As a result, Canadian Tire functions as retailer, insurer, and bank simultaneously, with financial services reinforcing consumer loyalty and spending frequency.
Investors can even gain exposure to parts of Canadian Tire’s real estate through a REIT listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange. The REIT owns the land and buildings leased back to Canadian Tire and related brands, with leases often stipulating scheduled rent increases. That arrangement further blurs the lines between retail operations and financial asset management.
The combined portfolio of stores, specialty brands, banks, loyalty programs, and real estate becomes a self-reinforcing system: loyalty schemes drive repeat business, financial services capture customer spending, and property holdings generate steady rental income. At the same time, this complexity complicates simple industry classifications. How should analysts value gasoline and convenience outlets, specialty automotive parts stores, apparel brands, or an integrated rewards ecosystem? As companies expand across sectors, defining a single market for them grows more difficult.
Calls for “more competition” can overlook this complexity. Many companies now compete less as single-industry firms and more as architects of sprawling ecosystems—combining commerce, finance, and property to capture value across everyday activities. As firms seek to touch every aspect of consumer life, the relationship between people and companies changes: customer behavior, loyalty programs, and routine purchases feed corporate balance sheets. In this new economy, consumers’ daily choices are increasingly woven into corporate asset strategies—making the customer both buyer and contributor to the firm’s financialized value.
Excerpted from The Big Fix: How Companies Capture Markets and Harm Canadians by Denise Hearn and Vass Bednar. Copyright 2024. Reprinted by permission of Sutherland House Books.
Denise Hearn is an author, applied researcher and advisor focused on how economic power and paradigms shape our world. She is a resident senior fellow at Columbia Centre on Sustainable Investment at Columbia University.
Vass Bednar is the executive director of McMaster University’s Master of Public Policy in Digital Society program. Her work focuses on the intersections between policy and the innovation ecosystem.