The positive surprise comes from the merchandising operations, which is encouraging.

It's 50-50 that they'll get anyone else at $18.

By including a retail real-estate developer in a partnership to make an offer for HBC, a financial player would avail himself of the expertise to examine every property and store lease and determine alternative strategies for each piece of real estate before making an offer.

There's a decent chance that some will hold out for at least $19.

These transformative issues are self-inflicted pain of a much greater magnitude than they anticipated. That's a knock against management. They just took on so very, very much.

Canadian Tire has been going from strength to strength.

It's a bit of win-win situation for the two. The Bay is saying it will replace all of the previous earnings generated by the financial services over the 10-year alliance.

(They) can always say Wal-Mart came to town in 1994 and it's been all downhill since, but they have had 12 years to figure out a way to do better, and it hasn't happened yet.