Swarajya's video: Amazon Wins: Supreme Court Prevents Reliance-Future Retail Deal Under Arbitration Conciliation Act

The Indian Supreme Court ruled on Friday that Singapore's Emergency Arbitrator (EA) ruling, which barred Future Retail from proceeding with its merger with Reliance Retail, is enforceable under the Arbitration and Conciliation Act. The decision is a major victory for e-commerce behemoth Amazon in the quest for India's massive market. The combination of Future Retail Ltd (FRL) and Reliance Retail had been challenged by the American firm. The judgement was handed down by an SC bench of Justices R F Nariman and B R Gavai, who had reserved it on 29 July after hearing lawyers, including senior counsel Harish Salve and Gopal Subramanium, who were representing FRL and Amazon, respectively. Future group, India's second-largest retailer with over 1,700 locations, agreed to sell its retail businesses to market leader Reliance last year, but the decision is a setback. However, Amazon, which had its sights set on eventually owning a portion of the retail assets, claimed that a 2019 arrangement it had with a unit of Future contained terms banning the retail business from selling them. The American e-commerce giant first filed a petition in the high court (single judge) seeking implementation of the EA judgement issued by the Singapore International Arbitration Centre (SIAC) on 25 October last year, preventing FRL from proceeding with the deal with Reliance Retail. The single-judge judgement was stayed by the high court division bench because FRL was not a party to the share subscription agreement (SSA) between Amazon and Future Coupons Pvt Ltd (FCPL), and the American corporation was not a party to the FRL-Reliance agreement. Subscribe to Swarajya on YouTube. Get a Swarajya subscription: https://subscriptions.swarajyamag.com/join-us Website: https://swarajyamag.com/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/SwarajyaMag Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/swarajyamag