Last week, German paper WirtschaftsWoche reported the parent company of Hudson’s Bay’s European operations was considering closing shops in the Netherlands this year, or letting the company go bankrupt.

And at the end of last year, the Telegraaf reported that the new owners – German retail group Karstadt – are ‘extremely concerned’ about the major investments the company is making in the Netherlands and the disappointing earnings.

The paper based its claims on internal documents which show the company has lost more than €80m in the Netherlands this year.

At the end of 2017, the company changed its strategy in the Netherlands to bring in cheaper product lines and last 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.