on Oct 21, 2021)New Delhi: In a double win for Amazon, the Singapore International Arbitration Centre (SIAC) has rejected Future Retail’s (FRL’s) plea to lift the interim stay on its Rs 24,700-crore asset sale to Reliance Retail, the retail arm of the Mukesh Ambani-led conglomerate Reliance Industries, said a person familiar with the development.
This follows the Singapore tribunal’s ruling to make FRL a party to the dispute, arising out of the agreement between Future Coupons (FCPL), an unlisted Future Group entity, and Amazon.
In addition, the US e-tailer has filed a petition in the Supreme Court, urging it to set aside a recent National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) order, which had allowed the Kishore Biyani-led Future Group to convene a meeting of its shareholders and creditors for consolidation of its entities.
The meeting is scheduled to be held in the second week of November and is being seen as the first step in the proposed sale of Future Group’s retail, warehousing and logistics assets to Reliance Industries. Amazon, locked in a bitter legal battle with the Future Group, wants to block the deal.
FRL had originally approached SIAC with two pleas. It had contended that it was not party to the agreement signed between FCPL and Amazon in 2019, through which the e-tailer had pumped around Rs 1,400 crore into FCPL. Second, FRL urged SIAC to lift the interim stay on its deal to sell its assets to Reliance Retail.
Amazon claimed the investment gave it an indirect stake in the flagship Future Group company, which operates supermarket chain Big Bazaar, as FCPL owned around 10% stake in FRL.
The subsequent announcement of Future Group’s proposed asset sale to Reliance, however, saw the e-tailer dragging the Big Bazaar parent to SIAC in October last year, which granted Amazon an interim award over the Future-Reliance deal. Amazon alleged that the Future Group violated contractual agreements due to the proposed deal with Reliance.
A Future Group spokesperson and Amazon did not comment for this story.
