Case Title: Amazon.Com NV Investment Holdings v. Future Retail Ltd and Others
The Supreme Court decided in favour of e-commerce behemoth Amazon in its fight against Future Retail Limited (FRL) over the latter's merger agreement with the Reliance Group. The Supreme Court ruled that the Emergency Award issued by a Singapore arbitrator, which halted the FRL-Reliance merger, is enforceable in Indian law.
The Court made these key observations by discussing the issues and answering them accordingly-
"We have framed 2 questions and answered them. Emergency arbitrator's award holds good under Section 17(1) of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act and a single Judge's order for such award cannot be appealed under Section 37(2),” Justice Nariman read the operative portion of the judgement in court.
"It is entirely wrong to assert that Section 17(1) of the Act would exclude an Emergency Arbitrator's directives," the Court wrote in its decision.
"We declare that full party autonomy is given by the Arbitration Act to have a dispute decided per institutional rules which can include Emergency Arbitrators delivering interim orders, described as "awards". Such orders are an important step in aid of decongesting the civil courts and affording expeditious interim relief to the parties. Such orders are referred to and are made under Section 17(1) of the Arbitration Act", the Court stated in its decision.
This means that the Supreme Court has authorised the implementation of the Singapore Emergency Arbitrator (EA) ruling, which was issued at Amazon's request, halting the Rs 24,731 crore merger of Future Retail and Reliance Industries Group (Mukesh Dhirubhai Ambani Group).
Furthermore, the Supreme Court affirmed the ruling of the Delhi High Court's single bench, which was found in favour of the implementation of the Emergency Award and held that the single judge's order was not appealable to the High Court's division bench under Section 37(2) of the Arbitration Act.
Earlier, the panel of Justices RF Nariman and BR Gavai had reserved the judgement after hearing arguments from Senior Advocates Gopal Subramanium for Amazon and Harish Salve for FRL.