Amazon has warned Future Retail Ltd (FRL) against the latter holding a meeting next week with its shareholders (April 20) and secured/unsecured creditors (April 21) to approve the deal of its $3.4bn asset sale to Reliance Retail. In February 2022, the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) passed the order to allow FRL to hold this meeting. Amazon said that such meetings are illegal and would breach 2019 agreements when Amazon made investments into FRL’s promoter firm Future Coupons Pvt. Ltd (FCPL). It warned that it would also violate a Singapore arbitral tribunal’s injunction on the sale of FRL’s assets to Reliance. In October 2020, an emergency arbitrator of the Singapore International Arbitration Centre had prevented FRL from proceedings with the deal with Reliance until the outcome. The letter further stated “Amazon is distressed to note that the promoters, FCPL and FRL are still intent on moving forward with the deal with Reliance, which constitutes a continuing non-compliance of the order of the duly constituted arbitral tribunal which is enforceable as any court order. Any actions of voting in favour of the scheme without Amazon’s consent would be considered an express violation committed by the Promoters and FCPL of valid and binding injunctions operating against them”. According to Amazon, Reliance is categorized as a restricted entity and retail assets could not be disposed to a restricted entity. The above update comes just a week after the Indian Supreme court allowed Amazon-Future to resume its arbitral proceedings before the Singapore tribunal.
Future Retail’s dollar bonds were trading higher with its 5.6% 2025 up 1 point to 52.5.
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