The Supreme Court on Tuesday granted liberty to Future Retail Ltd (FRL) to approach the Delhi High Court seeking court’s intervention to let the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) to move forward with the procedures of the FRL’s scheme of merger to sell its assets to Reliance Retail.
“We grant liberty to FRL to approach the High court in filing an application. The High Court can grant appropriate orders un influenced by any observations of the Supreme Court.”
Chief Justice NV Ramana
The top court had put aside three high court orders, on February 1 which included the attachment of properties of Future Group and its directors and the refusal to grant a stay on the final arbitral award.
The court prevented the deal between Future Retail Ltd and Reliance Retail, even after allowing the tribunal to go ahead with the proceedings for merger of Future group and Reliance group firms.
A bench of Chief Justice Ramana and Justices A S Bopanna and Hima Kohli had reserved its judgement in FRL’s petition.
According to Amazon, Future Group had allegedly violated a contract of partnership when it agreed to sell the assets to Reliance, in response, Amazon secured an interim stay on the deal from a Singapore arbitration tribunal.
The Future Group’s decision to sell Future’s retail assets to Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries created a tension between Amazon and Future Group.
Amazon is opposing the deal between Reliance and Future Group, because of its investment of ₹1,400 crores in Future Coupons, which is one of the promoters of Future Retail. This blocks asset sale to Amazon’s rivals.
The Supreme Court had rejected Amazon’s plea to file a written submission in that matter.