 HBC had announced its expansion into the Netherlands in May 2016 with the takeover of 20 former Vroom & Dreesmann (V&D) sites by 2017.V&D, a historic Dutch department store chain, had gone bankrupt and shut down in early 2016.HBC had acquired the German department store chain Galeria Kaufhof and its Belgian subsidiary from Metro Group in September 2015 for .