The Supreme Court on Wednesday requested a response from Future Retail in response to Amazon’s appeal of the Delhi High Court’s January 5 ruling halting the current arbitration procedures before an arbitral tribunal over Future Retail’s Rs 24,500-crore merger deal with Reliance.
The Future group entities, Future Coupons Private Ltd (FCPL) and Future Retail Ltd (FRL), were served with notices by a bench consisting of Chief Justice N V Ramana, Justices A S Bopanna and Hima Kohli, who said the matter would be heard on February 23 “without any adjournment.”
The Amazon-Future arbitration, which is taking place before a three-member arbitral tribunal over the latter’s Rs 24,500-crore deal with Reliance, was delayed by the Delhi High Court on January 5.
During the brief hearing, the CJI expressed concern with several media stories on his Tuesday remarks while also refusing Amazon’s request to file a written response in another case launched by FRL requesting permission to proceed with the merger with the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT).
After the US e-commerce giant led the Future Group to arbitration at the Singapore International Arbitration Centre in October 2020, the two have been involved in a legal battle.
The US corporation filed a new petition on which the Supreme Court issued notice, challenging a division bench of the Delhi High Court’s January 5 ruling halting the Amazon-Future arbitration before a three-member arbitral tribunal.
A single judge’s January 4 judgement dismissing the Future Group’s two pleas for a directive to the arbitration panel to decide on its application for terminating the arbitration procedures before proceeding had also been delayed by the high court’s division bench.
Amazon claimed that FRL breached their contract when it agreed to sell its assets for Rs 24,500 crore to Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Retail on a slump sale basis.
The Competition Commission of India stopped its over-two-year-old authorisation of Amazon’s proposal to purchase a 49-percent stake in FCPL and FRL promoter in December last year, as well as imposing a Rs 202 crore penalty on the e-commerce giant.
The high court had refused to stay the arbitral tribunal’s judgement refusing to intervene with the Emergency Award (EA), which prevented Future Group from proceeding with the agreement with Reliance, in October of last year.
On February 3, the highest court reserved its decision on FRL’s petition seeking approval from the NCLT to proceed with the merger arrangement with Reliance Retail.
Prior to this, the Supreme Court had set aside three Delhi High Court orders on February 1, including the attachment of FRL and its directors’ properties and the refusal to grant a stay on the final arbitral award that had prevented FRL from proceeding with the merger deal with Reliance Retail, and had ordered a new adjudication.
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