The Mumbai bench of the National Company Law Tribunal has allowed Future Group to seek creditors approval for its proposed ₹24,713 crore deal with Reliance Industries Ltd. It passed an order allowing the Future Group to convene a meeting of its shareholder and creditors.

“The Hon’ble NCLT has today, in terms of the Hon’ble Supreme Court judgment dated February 15, 2022, passed an order allowing the Company and other applicant companies to convene and conduct the meetings of its respective Shareholders and Creditors to seek their approval for the Scheme (“said Order”). Vide the said Order, the Hon’ble NCLT has also dismissed Amazon’s Application of 2021 for the reasons mentioned in the said Order,” the company said in a stock exchange filing.

Earlier this month the SC had said that the HC and NCLT should hear Amazon and Future Group's plea at the earliest.

Future Group had been facing acute cash crunch for the past two years now.

In August 2020, Reliance Industries had entered an agreement with cash-strapped Future group to purchase the latter’s retail assets for ₹24,731 crore. However, this deal got caught in a legal tussle after Amazon objected to it. Meanwhile, Future group has been defaulting on payments to lenders and has been finding it difficult to keep the stores open due to a cash crunch..

Future Retail has also defaulted in payment of dues to the owners of the leased premises and many have initiated termination of the lease agreements for repossession of the premises.

In a recent move, Reliance has started taking over the stores that it had rescued for Big Bazaar, a Future Group brand, and subleased it to the company to continue its operations. However, Future Retail's dues have crossed couple of thousand crore.

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