The owners of the Hudson’s Bay department store group are ‘extremely concerned’ about the major investments the company is making in the Netherlands and the disappointing earnings, the Telegraaf said on Thursday.

The paper bases its claims on internal documents which show the company has lost more than €80m in the Netherlands this year. The Telegraaf says staff layoffs are one of the options being considered.

At the end of last year, the company changed its strategy in the Netherlands to bring in cheaper product lines and in February plans to open a total of 20 department stores were scrapped.

Hudson’s Bay currently operates 13 stores in the Netherlands. Many of these are located in premises which were used by the V&D department store chain before it went bust. The first store opened in September 2017.