The National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) has allowed the creditors and shareholders of Reliance Retail Ventures to hold extraordinary general meetings to seek approval for the company’s proposed ₹24,700 crore deal with the Future Group.
The Mumbai bench of NCLT, led by Suchitra Kanuparthi, set aside objections raised by Amazon terming them as “premature” and allowed the application by Reliance Retail’s creditors and shareholders to convene meetings related to acquisition of Future Group’s businesses. The NCLT said the objections raised by American retail giant Amazon were premature and could be dealt with later.
Earlier, on a similar petition by the Future Group, the NCLT had allowed holding meetings of the creditors and shareholders for seeking approval for the transaction. While the Future Group companies will hold their EGMs from November 10 to November 14, RRVL and RRFLL will do so on November 30, said a source close to the development. The NCLT’s final clearance of the deal will be subject to the Supreme Court’s order, where both Future Retail, a Future Group company, and Amazon are litigating.
Reliance Retail Ventures is a subsidiary of Mukesh Ambani-owned Reliance Industries. On June 22, the tribunal had reserved its order on Reliance Retail’s plea to seek consensus of the shareholders on the company’s deal with Future Group.
Both the Future Group and Reliance had announced in August 2021 that Reliance Retail will acquire the wholesale, retail, logistics, and warehousing businesses from Kishore Biyani’s Future Group for Rs 24,713 crore.
Kishore Biyani moved to sell Future Group’s assets to RRVL after operations suffered under the national lockdown during the first wave of COVID-19 in the year 2020.
After RRVL announced the acquisition of Future Group’s retail and wholesale assets and the logistics and warehousing businesses by way of a slump sale, Amazon, which had acquired a 49 percent stake in Future Retail’s promoter entity Future Coupons in December 2019, said the deal went against its agreement with the Future Group. Amazon later moved the Singapore International Arbitration Centre (SIAC), which, in an interim order, restrained the transaction.
