Robert Campeau, Flamboyant Canadian Who Owned Bloomingdale’s, Dies at 93

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/21/business/obituary-robert-campeau-dead-bloomingdales.html

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Robert Campeau, a Canadian real estate developer who built a debt-fueled department store empire in the United States, including Bloomingdale’s, only for it to swiftly collapse in the frenzied financial climate of the 1980s, died on June 12 at his home in Ottawa. He was 93.

His family confirmed his death, but no cause was given.

Mr. Campeau had made his fortune in Canada building suburban homes, office towers and shopping malls when he learned in 1985 that Edward S. Finkelstein, the chairman of R. H. Macy & Company, was considering raising debt to buy the department store chain from its shareholders.

Mr. Campeau, who by then had started building in the United States, saw an opportunity and tried to set up a meeting with Mr. Finkelstein to see if he could participate in the venture. He was rebuffed. But the rejection was a spur: Ever the risk-taker, he decided to build a department store conglomerate on his own, even though he had no background in retailing.

For advice, he turned to Bruce Wasserstein, a Wall Street investment banker who had helped turn hostile takeovers, funded by high interest rate debt, into a hallmark of the 1980s. Mr. Campeau proceeded to spend $3.6 billion, nearly all of it debt, to buy the retail conglomerate Allied Stores in 1986. Its 750 outlets included Brooks Brothers, Ann Taylor, Bonwit Teller and many regional department stores.

In his book “Going for Broke: How Robert Campeau Bankrupted the Retail Industry, Jolted the Junk Bond Market, and Brought the Booming Eighties to a Crashing Halt” (1991), John Rothchild wrote that after Mr. Campeau had agreed to buy Allied, it became apparent that he did not have enough money to cover the down payment.

But the Allied purchase was only the beginning. Mr. Campeau next found himself battling Mr. Finkelstein for control of Federated Department Stores, the jewel of which was Bloomingdale’s. Federated’s directors favored selling the company to Macy’s, but Mr. Campeau continued to raise his bid to win over investors.

To end the bidding war, Mr. Finkelstein eventually invited Mr. Campeau to his townhouse in Manhattan. (Mr. Campeau also had a home in Manhattan, as well as one in Florida and one in Toronto.) Mr. Campeau emerged the winner, paying $6.6 billion for Federated and adding it to his empire.

He had never been a shy man; in Toronto he had been known for giving extravagant parties at the faux French chateau he built. But his ownership of Bloomingdale’s, considered the most glamorous department store in New York at the time, elevated him to a new level of fame. For a time, he and his second wife, the former Ilse Luebbert, became fixtures of New York society. Chatelaine, a Canadian women’s magazine, declared him to be one of Canada’s 10 sexiest men. (His son Daniel, then a racecar driver sponsored by the Campeau company, also made the list.)

To bring down his debt, Mr. Campeau sold off assets, including Brooks Brothers and Ann Taylor. But that proved not to be enough. By 1989, he had been forced to sell a large portion of his company for $250 million to the Reichmann family, Toronto real estate developers who were as private as Mr. Campeau was flamboyant. Early in 1990, Federated and Allied filed for bankruptcy.

(Federated later merged with Allied and rebounded and expanded in the 1990s, acquiring Macy’s, among other companies.)

Robert Joseph Antoine Campeau, one of six children, was born on Aug. 3, 1923, in Chelmsford, Ontario, a French-speaking community near Canada’s nickel mining center, to Joseph Campeau and the former Lucie Ranger.

His father was a blacksmith and mechanic who struggled to find work. The younger Mr. Campeau quit school in the eighth grade and lied about his age to take a job as a sweeper at Inco, the largest mining company in the area.

From the start, his French-Catholic background was an impediment in dealing with a Canadian business community dominated by English-speaking Protestants, he told The New York Times Magazine in 1988. By contrast, he said, he later found that the United States had “a refreshing atmosphere” in which “it doesn’t matter what your name is.”

The young Mr. Campeau drifted east to Ottawa, the capital, which was rapidly expanding after World War II. He took a variety of jobs there, including truck driving, and owned a corner store. He went on to build his own home, sold it for a profit and started building swaths of no-frills suburban bungalows and townhouses.

Mr. Campeau’s houses were not widely admired. Charlotte Whitton, an Ottawa mayor who frequently clashed with him over his efforts to skirt zoning rules, once said his houses made a case for nuclear annihilation.

Mr. Campeau developed a friendship with Pierre Elliott Trudeau, Canada’s former Liberal prime minister (and the father of Justin Trudeau, the current prime minister), as well as other prominent politicians. Their political opponents suggested that those relationships played a role in Mr. Campeau’s being awarded contracts to build and lease vast office complexes for an expanding Canadian federal government. Canada’s auditor general found that the government had overpaid on many of those deals.

In Toronto, Mr. Campeau pioneered redeveloping the city’s previously industrial waterfront and built some of the city’s first high-rise condominiums.

He had a complex personal life. There were several publicized bouts with mental illness. While raising three children with his first wife, the former Clauda Leroux, a textile worker, Mr. Campeau had a covert relationship and a child with Ms. Luebbert, an Austrian who later became his second wife. She lived on a farm he had bought near Montreal, about two hours from Ottawa. When the arrangement was discovered, he and his wife divorced. She died in 1980.

Mr. Campeau and his second wife separated in 1996. By then, he had transferred most of his assets to her, and after they split up, leading to a divorce, he sued her for support. A highly publicized legal struggle continued for years.

After the collapse of his department store holdings, Mr. Campeau was fired from the company that bore his name, and the Reichmanns took control. (Their business group soon failed as well.) Mr. Campeau retreated to Austria, where for many years he dabbled in real estate deals, living largely as a recluse.

It is unclear when he returned to Ottawa or when he married for a third time, to Cristal Dettman, whom he had met in Berlin during his European exile. She survives him. His other survivors include his son, Daniel; five siblings and half-siblings, and eight grandchildren.

Canadian news reports indicated that Mr. Campeau lived in rented townhouses after his return to Canada and had a relatively modest income until his divorce from Ilse Campeau was made final.

Back in his glory days, however, he dismissed any suggestions that his approach to business might prove perilous.

“It’s the story of my life,” he told The Times in 1988. “When I built my first 10 houses, people said I would go broke. and I’ve built thousands since. I like to take risks.”