The 1670 Hudson's Bay Company Royal Charter, considered among one of Canada's founding documents, has been sold for C$18m ($13m; £9.6m) to two of the country's richest families.
The 355-year-old charter, which granted the Hudson's Bay Company wide-ranging powers over large swaths of what is now Canada, ended up at auction when the corporation filed for bankruptcy over the summer.
The offer by firms owned by the Weston family and David Thomson, chairman of Thomson Reuters, will keep the historically significant document in Canada.
And the charter - once housed in a rural manor in the UK in World War Two during the blitz - will be under shared custody of various Canadian museums and archives.
The bid also includes a C$5m donation to those custodian musuems for stewardship and public education around the document.
