Future Retail moves HC against order to maintain status quo on deal with Reliance

Future Retail on Wednesday moved the division bench of the Delhi High Court challenging the court’s single judge’s order on Tuesday that asked it to maintain status quo with regard to the Rs 24,713-crore deal with Reliance Retail.
A bench comprising Chief Justice DN Patel and Justice Jyoti Singh agreed to hear the appeal on Thursday. It rejected FRL senior counsel Darius Khambata’s request to hear the stay application in the afternoon itself. “FRL will be saved from insolvency..the matter is coming up tomorrow otherwise..”, Khambata told the judges.

However, senior counsel Rajiv Nayar, appearing for Amazon, opposed the mentioning, saying the HC’s procedure ought to be followed.

Alleging that the single judges’s order will “jeopardise” the entire amalgamation scheme and will affect public at large, Future Group, in its petition, stated that Tuesday’s order will bring the merger scheme between FRL, Reliance Retail Ventures and Reliance Retail and Fashion Lifestyle to a standstill and will “effectively derail the entire scheme; much less when the Scheme has been approved by statutory authorities in accordance with law”.

FRL said that it has filed the petition for seeking approval for its scheme of amalgamation before the NCLT after getting nod from the Competition Commission of India on November 20 and observation letters from stock exchanges granting approval to the scheme on January 20.

The single judge of Justice JR Midha had on Tuesday dealt a major blow to Future Group by directing it to maintain status quo till further orders with regard to its deal with Reliance Retail wherein it has sold its certain retail assets to the latter. The deal has been objected to by Amazon which is seeking enforcement of an award by Singapore’s Emergency Arbitrator (EA) which has restrained Future Group from going ahead with the transaction.