Billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance scraps $3.2bn deal to buy India’s Future Group – The National

Billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance scraps $3.2bn deal to buy India’s Future Group – The National

Billionaire Mukesh Ambani abandoned a plan to buy a teetering Indian retailer amid protracted legal challenges from Amazon.com, potentially ending one episode of the broader clash between the two titans to control the country’s billion-people-plus market.

In a filing on Saturday, Reliance Industries said its proposal to acquire certain assets of Mumbai-based Future Group — which ran the nation’s biggest retail grocery chain before the pandemic struck — “cannot be implemented” after its flagship firm Future Retail failed to win the approval of its secured creditors for the deal. Reliance didn’t elaborate.

Ever since Reliance announced the plan in August 2020, to purchase Future’s core units for 247.1 billion rupees ($3.2bn), the indebted retailer has found itself at the centre of a battle between Mr Ambani and Jeff Bezos. Amazon has fiercely contested the takeover by Mr Ambani, arguing in several courts that contractually it had the first right of refusal to buy Future.