- Thursday, February 27, 2025
By: Shubham Ghosh
A COURT in Delhi has stopped arbitration proceedings between Indian company Future Group and US e-commerce giant Amazon in light of India’s antitrust agency’s suspension of a 2019 agreement between the two sides.
The decision, which was taken on Wednesday (5), gave a setback to the American firm which had successfully used the terms of its 2019 investment in a unit of Future to stop the latter’s attempt to sell retail assets to a rival company, Reuters reported.
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After the Competition Commission of India suspended the 2019 deal in December citing suppression of information by Amazon at the time of looking for clearances, Future said there was no legal basis for the arbitration between the two companies to persist in Singapore.
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The Singapore International Arbitration Centre is adjudicating Amazon’s objections against Future’s Rs 24,713 crore (£2.4 billion) deal with Reliance Retail Ventures Ltd, a subsidiary of Reliance Industries Ltd which is chaired by Mukesh Ambani.
However, the so-called “seat of the arbitration” is New Delhi, which means the proceedings are governed by Indian law.
A two-judge bench led by chief justice DN Patel of the Delhi High Court agreed with Future’s arguments and put the arbitration proceedings on hold. If the proceedings are not halted, this would cause an “irreparable loss” to Future, justice Patel said.
“We hereby stay further proceedings of arbitral tribunal till next date of hearing,” Patel said, adding the court will reconvene on February 1 to hear the case again.
Future and Amazon did not respond to requests for comment from Reuters.
A source familiar with the case said Amazon was likely to challenge the decision of the Delhi court.
Amazon has been arguing that Future violated the terms of its 2019 deal in deciding to sell retail assets to Reliance and Amazon’s position had so far been backed by the Singapore arbitrator and Indian courts. Future said it did not do anything wrong.
Future had approached the Delhi court after the Singapore arbitration panel disagreed to its immediate demands to terminate the proceedings following the antitrust suspension of the 2019 deal.
(With Reuters inputs)
