- Saturday, April 20, 2024
By: Shubham Ghosh
THE Supreme Court of India on Thursday (29) reserved its verdict on e-commerce giant Amazon’s appeal against the merger of Future Retail Ltd (FRL) with Reliance Retail and would rule whether Singapore’s Emergency Arbitrator (EA) award, restraining the Rs 24,731 crore ($3.3 billion) was valid under the Indian law.
Amazon.com NV Investment Holdings LLC and FRL are engaged in a bitter legal tussle over the deal and the US-based company has sought in the top court that the EA award was valid and could be enforced.
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“So we close the case now. The judgement is reserved,” a bench of justices R F Nariman and B R Gavai said after senior advocates Harish Salve and Gopal Subramanium, appearing for FRL and Amazon, respectively, concluded their submissions in the case.
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The Supreme Court, which had earlier asked the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) not to pass the final order related to regulatory approvals for the FRL-RRL amalgamation, started hearing the final arguments on July 20.
“We will decide whether EA award falls under section 17 (1) (which deals with interim award by arbitral tribunal) of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act. And if yes, then whether it can be enforced under section 17 (2) (of the Act),” the bench said.
The provisions of the Act deal with the interim measures ordered by an arbitral tribunal and section 17 (1) says: “Unless otherwise agreed by the parties, the arbitral tribunal may, at the request of a party, order a party to take any interim measure of protection as the arbitral tribunal may consider necessary in respect of the subject-matter of the dispute.”
Section 17 (2) provides that the arbitral tribunal may require a party to provide appropriate security in connection with an interim measure ordered.
