Robert Campeau

Robert Joseph Antoine Campeau (August 3, 1923 – June 12, 2017) was a Canadian financier and real estate developer. Starting from a single house constructed in 1940 in the Alta Vista neighbourhood of Ottawa, Ontario, Campeau built a large land development corporation around the development of the suburb of Kanata. Expansion in the U.S. led Campeau to diversify into the ownership of retail department stores to anchor commercial development projects. The Campeau Corporation used leveraged buyouts to buy the department stores and went bankrupt when it could not maintain the debt payments, in the largest retailing bankruptcy at the time in U.S. history.