Canadian Tire to buy 12 Target property leases in Canada

(Reuters) - Retailer Canadian Tire Corp Ltd said it would buy leases for 12 properties previously held by the Canadian unit of Target Corp for $17.7 million. The 12 locations, spread across the country, will add about 400,000 square feet of retail space to Canadian Tire Retail's store network, the company said on Wednesday. Apart from its namesake automotive and homeware stores, Canadian Tire also operates Mark's, a casual and industrial wear retailer, and FGL Sports, whose store brands include Sport Chek, Hockey Experts and Sports Experts. "We've been tracking certain Target properties for some time and when the opportunity came up, we moved quickly and secured virtually all of them," Canadian Tire CEO Michael Medline said in a statement. U.S. discount retailer Target, granted creditor protection for its money-losing Canadian subsidiary, in April closed the last of its 133 retail stores in Canada. Canadian retailers Metro Inc and Hudson's Bay Co have also shown interest in leasing Target's properties. Canadian Tire did not specify if the deal value was in U.S. or Canadian dollars. Toronto-based Canadian Tire's shares were down 1.1 percent at C$126.55 on the Toronto Stock Exchange. (Reporting by Sneha Banerjee in Bengaluru; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty and Sriraj Kalluvila)