The Hudson’s Bay Company went out of business in 2025. Founded in 1670, it was the oldest company in North America, and it shaped the history of Canada like probably no other private company has shaped a large country’s history. Its original name was The Governor and Company of Adventurers of England Trading Into Hudson‘s Bay. I wish they still named companies that way, even though the actual meaning of the name was less romantic than it now appears: Adventurers in this context meant shareholders.
A useful fact for those accused of being absentee CEOs: The first governor of the HBC to actually visit Canada was Patrick Ashley Cooper in 1934, 264 years after the company’s founding.
Nehaveigur 