
The Future Retail made a statement saying “the company has filed necessary suit in the Delhi High Court on November 7, 2020, in relation to seeking necessary reliefs against Amazon.com NV Investment Holdings LLC (Amazon) from interfering with the transaction by misusing an interim order dated October 25, 2020, issued by an emergency arbitrator, appointed by the SIAC.”
“The company has inter alia made all entities parties to the suit which were parties to the arbitration proceedings, this includes the promoters of the company. It may be noted that the reliefs sought in the suit are only against Amazon,” the company added.
Amazon went to SIAC over this conspiracy and that issued an interim award in favor of Amazon barring FRL from taking “any step to dispose of or encumber its assets or issuing any securities” to secure any funding from a restricted party.
The whole conspiracy comes after the deal in August, where Reliance Retail Ventures, a unit of RIL agreed to buy the retail assets of the Future Group.
On August 29, Future Retail had announced that it would “sell by way of a slump sale the retail and wholesale business” of its supermarket chain Big Bazaar, premium food supply unit Foodhall, and fashion and clothes supermart Brand Factory’s retail and wholesale units to Reliance Retail.
However, Amazon owns a 49% stake in Future Retail and has invested $200 million in a Future unit. Amazon said, the Future-Reliance deal means that Amazon will no longer remain the single largest shareholder of Future Retail, which has an “irreplaceable and widespread network” of more than 1,500 retail stores.
Amazon alleged that it had a contract with Future retail that prevents some listed companies from buying a stake in the company. The list includes Reliance, which is growing rapidly in the Indian Retail market and had received several investments from the market.