Robert Campeau

Robert Joseph Antoine Campeau was a Canadian financier and real estate developer, who engineered the largest retailing bankruptcy at the time in U.S. history. Starting from a single house constructed in 1940 Alta Vista 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.