Mall operators Simon and Brookfield to acquire J.C. Penney stores

(Image credit: Getty Images)

published 9 September 2020

Simon Property Group and Brookfield Property Partners have agreed to buy J.C. Penney, lawyers for the department store chain said in a bankruptcy court hearing on Wednesday.

The two mall owners will pay roughly $300 million in cash and assume $500 million in debt, The New York Times reports. With the sale, J.C. Penney, which the deal values at $1.75 billion, will avoid a liquidation.

At the hearing, lawyer Joshua Sussberg said J.C. Penney is now "in a position to do exactly what we set out to do at the very beginning of these cases and that is to preserve 70,000 jobs, a tenant for landlords, a vendor partner, and a company that has been around for more than a century." J.C. Penney filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in May, the biggest retailer to do so amid the pandemic.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Explore More

Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.