The Supreme Court has upheld e-commerce giant Amazon’s plea against the Rs 24,731-crore merger of Future Retail Ltd (FRL) with Reliance Retail.
The top Court said that the order by a Singapore arbitrator in October – that put the deal on hold after finding merit in Amazon’s objections – was valid.
Amazon and FRL have been embroiled in a bitter legal fight over the deal and the US-based firm has sought in the apex court that the EA award was valid and enforceable.
“We will decide whether EA award falls under section 17 (1) (which deals with interim award by arbitral tribunal) of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act. And if yes, then whether it can be enforced under section 17 (2) (of the Act),” the bench had said.
The provisions of the Act deal with the interim measures ordered by an arbitral tribunal and section 17 (1) says: “Unless otherwise agreed by the parties, the arbitral tribunal may, at the request of a party, order a party to take any interim measure of protection as the arbitral tribunal may consider necessary in respect of the subject-matter of the dispute.”
The top court, which had earlier asked the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) not to pass the final order related to regulatory approvals for the FRL-RRL amalgamation, commenced hearing the final arguments on July 20.
Kishore Biyani and 15 others including FRL and Future Coupon Pvt Ltd (FCPL) have been made parties by Amazon in a batch of pleas challenging the Delhi High Court order of the division bench which paved the way for the deal.
On February 8, the division bench had stayed the single-judge direction to FRL and various statutory authorities to maintain the status quo on the mega-deal.
The interim direction was passed on FRL’s appeal challenging the February 2 order of the single judge which had ruled in favour of the US firm saying that the EA’s award was valid and enforceable.
Amazon had first filed a plea before the high court (single judge) for enforcement of the October 25, 2020, EA award by Singapore International Arbitration Centre (SIAC) restraining FRL from going ahead with the deal with Reliance Retail.
