answers: 2001
context: in the United States and Canada. In 1989, the British company Grand Metropolitan (later Diageo) purchased the food maker, and during this ownership period the company divested itself of all production and distribution facilities (contracting these functions to other companies), making itself simply a marketing entity for its own brands (Pillsbury, Green Giant, Old El Paso, Totino's, etc.) In 2001, Diageo sold Pillsbury to its old rival, General Mills. However, the baking products division was sold to International Multifoods Corporation, which was later acquired by Smucker's. Pillsbury sold all of their restaurant brands and exited the business completely by the </s> poorly located, yet extravagant, new shopping centers across the country. With Hooker and Herscu knowing virtually nothing about how to operate these various retailing chains, and then placing them in locations with no regard to market recognition or demographics, their strategy failed miserably, and in August 1989 B. Altman filed for bankruptcy protection, with the last store closing in 1990. The suburban Buffalo location at the huge Walden Galleria complex was, in fact, fully completed and fixtured but never occupied by Altman's. It would later be occupied in 1991 by local department store AM&A's and eventually a Bon-Ton, which vacated </s> one of the first retailers to carry consumer products from IBM, Apple, Compaq, Hewlett Packard, Western Digital and many others. The SOHO Department was carved into a separate division of the company and quickly became Montgomery Ward's largest revenue producing division, with over $4 billion in revenues. In 1994, Wards acquired the now-defunct New England retail chain Lechmere. By the 1990s, however, even its rivals began to lose ground to low-price competition from Kmart, Wal-Mart, and especially Target, which eroded even more of Montgomery Ward's traditional customer base. In 1997, it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, emerging from protection by
question: when did montgomery ward 's go out of business