NEW DELHI (Reuters) – The Indian Future Group expects a speedy approval of its $ 3.4 billion deal to sell its retail assets, its CEO said, even as rival business partner Amazon.com Inc. disputes efforts to block transaction.
Future and Amazon are at odds over the Indian group’s deal with Reliance Industries Ltd. in August. The American giant claims that the agreement violates a number of its existing contracts with Future.
A New Delhi court in December rejected Future’s request to stop Amazon’s repeated attempts to persuade authorities to halt the deal. But the judge left the fate of the deal to the regulators.
“The court has given its opinion that each institution can take a stand” on the sale, Future Group founder and CEO Kishore Biyani told Reuters in an interview. “So there’s no reason why things should be delayed.”
Amazon declined to comment on Biyani’s comments. Reliance did not respond to a request for comment.
The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), the market regulator that has been reviewing the transaction for months, did not respond to a request for comment.
SEBI and India’s stock exchanges may still reject or take the deal longer, which is critical to the continued existence of Future Retail, the more than 1,700 stores of which were hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Future Retail has warned that the failure to close the deal could lead to the liquidation of the business and job losses for more than 29,000 employees.
“We have restored businesses to some extent, but there are challenges,” said Biyani, who has been called India’s retail king because he has changed the country’s retail business over the past few decades.
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The outcome of the dispute over Future, Reliance and Amazon is seen as shaping India’s retail landscape, especially in deciding who will have a lead in the grocery market, which by 2024 will amount to about $ 740 billion a year.
Following Amazon’s 2019 deal with a Future unit, the Indian retailer’s groceries and fashion products are being offered for sale on Amazon’s website, while Future stores also act as local warehouses serving the US giant’s food range .
Biyani said he has no plans to change his business ties with Amazon, despite the sour relationship. However, Biyani criticized Amazon, saying he was confused about what Amazon wanted to achieve by blocking its deal.
“I’m disappointed,” he said. “What do they want? They want so many employees to suffer, and the business to go down? ‘
Amazon also took Future to an arbitrator in Singapore, which accepted an interim order in October and said the Reliance agreement should be terminated. Although Future says the order is not binding, the US e-commerce giant is continuing its efforts to block the deal.
In a letter on Tuesday, Amazon asked the Indian stock exchanges BSE and NSE to suspend their review of the deal in light of the ongoing arbitration in Singapore.
To confirm his case, on December 30, Amazon shared a 63-page confidential legal opinion signed by a former India chief justice Dipak Misra. According to Reuters, Misra said that SEBI or any other statutory authority could not ignore the interim order adopted by the arbitrator.
Misra and the NSE did not immediately respond to a request for comment. BSE declined to comment.
Reporting by Aditya Kalra in New Delhi; Additional reporting by Abhirup Roy in Mumbai; Edited by William Mallard