Future Retail Ltd (FRL) has filed an appeal in the Delhi high court against the status-quo order passed on Tuesday on its Rs 24,713-crore deal with Reliance.
“Further to our letter dated February 2, 2021, please be informed that the company has filed an appeal before Hon’ble High Court of Delhi against the impugned order dated February 2, 2021,” the Future group firm said in a regulatory filing.
On Tuesday, Justice J. R. Midha of the Delhi high court had directed FRL to maintain status quo in relation to the transaction with Reliance Retail after the objections raised by Amazon. Following the Tuesday directive, FRL had said it would explore legal recourse. The matter will be heard on Thursday by a division bench of Chief Justice D.N. Patel and Justice Jyoti Singh.
The company on Wednesday moved a division bench of the Delhi high court appealing against this order.
FRL’s scheme of arrangement has already received approval from the CCI, Sebi and conditional nod from the stock exchanges, following which it had approached the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) on January 26. The application is yet to be taken up by the NCLT, FRL had said.
Last month, Amazon had filed a petition in 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.
Justice J R Midha, on Tuesday, said the court was satisfied that an immediate interim order was required to be passed to protect the rights of Amazon.
“Respondents (FRL) and other respondents are directed to maintain status quo as on today at 4:49pm till the pronouncement of the reserved order,” the judge had said.
The high court reserved its order on the main petition. It also directed all the other concerned authorities to maintain status quo in relation to the matters which are in violation of the emergency award and to file report with regard to the present status within 10 days.
Amazon has sought to restrain Kishore Biyaniled Future group from taking any steps to complete the transaction with entities that are a part of the Mukesh Dhirubhai Ambani (MDA) Group. Earlier, it had dragged the Future group to arbitration at SIAC, arguing that the latter violated their contract by entering into the deal with Reliance.
In October last year, an interim award was passed in favour of Amazon with a singlejudge bench barring Future Retail from taking any step to dispose of or encumber its assets or issuing any securities to secure any funding from a restricted party.
