The Supreme Court issued notice to Future Retail, other entities of Future Group on Amazon's plea against Delhi High Court direction to maintain status quo on Future-Reliance deal.
The proceedings before NCLT will go on but will not culminate into any final order on amalgamation of FRL with Reliance, said the apex court on Amazon's plea. A bench comprising Justices R F Nariman and B R Gavai issued notices to Future Retail Ltd, Chairperson Kishore Biyani and others and sought their replies.
The bench said, "We issue notice to come up after three weeks, after the rejoinder is filed within two weeks. Meanwhile NCLT proceedings allowed to go on but not to culminate into any final order of sanction of schemes."
Harish Salve, senior counsel appearing on behalf of Future Retail Ltd said that the FRL’s meeting is first step meeting where everyone else has appeared. "That is 6 weeks away. Staying NCLT proceedings will only stay meeting for six weeks."
Amazon moved the Apex court after the Delhi High Court revoked a previous single judge decision that effectively blocked the deal. The high court order was, however, an interim one and the next hearing is on February 26.
In its petition to the Supreme Court, Amazon said the New Delhi High Court should have waited for a detailed order of the single-judge bench before removing the hold on the deal.
Last month, Amazon had approached the Delhi High Court seeking enforcement of the interim order of the Emergency Arbitrator (EA) at the Singapore International Arbitration Centre (SIAC) that had restrained FRL from going ahead with the deal with Reliance.
In the interim order on February 8, the division bench said it was staying the single judge order as firstly, FRL was not a party to the share subscription agreement (SSA) between Amazon and Future Coupons Pvt Ltd (FCPL) and the US e-commerce giant was not a party to the deal between FRL and Reliance Retail.
(Input from agencies)
