Empire Company Limited (TSX: EMP.A) is a Canadian holding company based in Stellarton, Nova Scotia.
Controlled by the Sobey family, Empire is sole owner of the Canadian grocery chain Sobeys Inc., as well as various commercial real estate and residential development companies, notably ASC (originally Atlantic Shopping Centres) and Crombie REIT. Empire also owns one of Canada's largest movie theatre companies, Empire Theatres. The company also operates additional companies and has various corporate investment activities.
On July 15, 2007, all of the outstanding stocks for Sobeys were purchased by Empire Company Ltd. and Sobeys was therefore privatized by the conglomerate corporation.
Famous quotes containing the words empire and/or company:
“I date the end of the old republic and the birth of the empire to the invention, in the late thirties, of air conditioning. Before air conditioning, Washington was deserted from mid-June to September.... But after air conditioning and the Second World War arrived, more or less at the same time, Congress sits and sits while the presidents—or at least their staffs—never stop making mischief.”
—Gore Vidal (b. 1925)
“Is not disease the rule of existence? There is not a lily pad floating on the river but has been riddled by insects. Almost every shrub and tree has its gall, oftentimes esteemed its chief ornament and hardly to be distinguished from the fruit. If misery loves company, misery has company enough. Now, at midsummer, find me a perfect leaf or fruit.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)