India's Future files new case against Amazon in top court over $3.4 bln retail deal

Future Enterprises

28/08/2021 11:08

By Aditya Kalra
    NEW DELHI, Aug 28 (Reuters) - India's Future Retail
 FRTL.NS  on Saturday filed a new case against Amazon.com Inc
 AMZN.O  at the Supreme Court in its latest effort to seek
clearance for its $3.4 billion retail assets sale, which the
U.S. firm has challenged.
    The Supreme Court this month dealt a blow https://reut.rs/2TXP9wx
 to Future when it said an interim decision by a Singapore
arbitrator in October 2020 that put its deal with Reliance
Industries  RELI.NS  on hold - following Amazon's complaint -
was valid in India. 
    The top court had also said Future could not appeal a lower
court's decision against it. The retailer is now asking the top
court to hear the challenge, people familiar with the case said.
    In its over 6,000-page filing, Future has argued that if the
deal with Reliance doesn't go through, it would cause
"unimaginable" damage to the group, including possible job
losses for 35,575 employees, and put at risk roughly 280 billion
rupees ($3.81 billion) in bank loans and debentures.
    "There is extreme urgency to hear this petition," Future
counsel Yugandhara Pawar Jha said in the Supreme Court filing,
which is not public. Reuters has seen the filing.
    Amazon and Future spokespersons did not respond to requests
for comment on Saturday.
    Amazon has for months been locked in a dispute with Future,
and accuses the Indian firm of violating contracts when it sold
its retail assets to market leader Reliance last year. Future
denies any wrongdoing.
    The outcome of the tussle involving two of the world’s
richest men, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Reliance’s Mukesh Ambani,
is seen as reshaping India’s pandemic-hit shopping sector https://www.reuters.com/article/amazon-india-future-reliance-idUSKBN2871AM
 and deciding whether Amazon can blunt Reliance's dominance of
the country's nearly trillion-dollar retail market.
    The dispute started after Future, India's second-largest
retailer, with more than 1,700 stores, including popular Big
Bazaar supermarkets, entered a deal last year to sell its retail
businesses to Reliance after COVID-19 hit its operations hard.  
 

 (Reporting by Aditya Kalra in New Delhi. Editing by Gerry
Doyle)
 ((aditya.kalra@tr.com; +91-11-49548021; Twitter @adityakalra;))