A Singapore arbitration tribunal on Monday began hearing Future Group’s plea to lift the stay on the deal to sell its retail assets to Reliance Retail and exclude its flagship listed company as a party to the dispute with Amazon. The Singapore International Arbitration Centre (SIAC) in October last year had given an emergency award staying the FutureReliance transaction until it decided on Amazon’s challenge to the sale.
A three-member tribunal, comprising Singaporean barrister Michael Hwang, Albert van den Berg and Jan Paulsson, is first hearing Future Retail’s plea that the dispute was between one of its promoter companies and Amazon, and that it should not be made a party to it. This hearing will continue on Tuesday, while during the next two days, the bench will consider the request to lift the stay, people in the know said.
But a decision is expected only next month, they said. Also, the panel has yet to schedule proceedings on the main dispute — Amazon’s challenge to the Future-Reliance deal.
On Monday, the proceedings started in the afternoon India time and Future’s lawyers examined Amazon India senior counsel Hina Doon, one of the people said. “One the first day, there was cross-examination of only one witness from Amazon,” the person said.
Amazon declined to comment on the proceedings, while a Future Retail spokesperson didn’t respond to ET’s request for comment.
The legal battle started after the Future Group in August last year agreed to sell its retail assets to Reliance Retail for about Rs 25,000 crore. Amazon, which owns a 49% stake in Future Retail’s promoter firm, Future Coupons Pvt Ltd, has claimed that the deal was in breach of its 2019 investment pact with Future Coupons that gave the American ecommerce company the right of first refusal in case of sale.
It also said as per the 2019 investment agreement, Future Retail was barred from any sale of assets to entities including Reliance.