The battle between Amazon and Future Retail is headed back to the Singapore arbitration tribunal — restarting a legal process that had been short-circuited by a division bench of the Delhi high court on January 5.

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court ruled that the two warring parties could resume their arbitral proceedings before the Singapore tribunal, which had issued an emergency award in October 2020 upholding Amazon’s right to stymie the sale of Future Retail (FRL) to Reliance Retail under a Rs 24,713-crore deal struck in August that year.

The apex court also allowed Amazon to withdraw its application seeking an injunction to stop FRL from alienating its stores and other assets to the Reliance group. It permitted the US e-commerce giant to approach the Delhi High Court to seek appropriate relief.

The Reliance group has already grabbed control of over 800 Future group stores – and Amazon has been trying to block the capture of the remaining 370-odd outlets that still remain with the Kishore Biyani group.

A Supreme Court bench comprising Chief Justice N.V.Ramana, Justice Krishna Murari and Justice Hima Kohli also said both parties could request the international tribunal to hear on a priority basis the application moved by FRL for the termination of the arbitration proceedings initiated by Amazon.

Amazon’s plan to enforce the Singapore tribunal’s emergency award came unstuck last December when the Competition Commission of India suspended its approval to the deal that Amazon had struck in August 2019 through which it acquired a 49 per cent stake in Future Coupons Private Ltd and a 4.82 per cent indirect interest in Future Retail Ltd (FRL).

The CCI decision effectively knocked out the fundamental argument on the basis of which Amazon was battling the sale of Future Retail to the Reliance group.

FRL had earlier moved the application before the Singapore tribunal under Section 32(2) of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996 for termination of the arbitration proceedings initiated by Amazon on the ground that the CCI had revoked the approval granted for the Amazon-Future Coupon deal.

The apex court disposed of the proceedings after senior advocates Gopal Subramanium, Ranjit Kumar appearing for Amazon and senior counsel-Mukul Rohatgi and K.V.Viswanathan for Future, recorded an undertaking before the court through a joint memo for the resumption of the arbitration proceedings before the Singapore tribunal.

Besides filing an interim application to stop FRL from alienating its assets, Amazon had filed the present Special Leave Petition (SLP) challenging the January 5 stay imposed by Delhi High Court on the pending arbitral proceedings before the Singapore arbitration tribunal.

Veteran Singapore-based barrister Michael Hwang has been appointed as the judge for the arbitration tribunal in the Amazon-Future case.

Albert Jan van den Berg, the founding partner of law firm Hanotiau & van den Berg, and Jan Paulsson, a Swedish arbitration veteran and founding partner of Three Crowns Llp, are the two members of the arbitration panel.

Van den Berg is Amazon’s nominee on the panel while Paulsson has been named by the Future group.