Future Group operates the Big Bazaar brand of stores, which was India’s biggest retail grocery chain before the pandemic. Reuters
Future Group operates the Big Bazaar brand of stores, which was India’s biggest retail grocery chain before the pandemic. Reuters
Future Group operates the Big Bazaar brand of stores, which was India’s biggest retail grocery chain before the pandemic. Reuters
Future Group operates the Big Bazaar brand of stores, which was India’s biggest retail grocery chain before the pandemic. Reuters

Business

Economy

Billionaire Mukesh Ambani's Reliance scraps $3.2bn deal to buy India's Future Group

The setback to Reliance may be minimal after the group began poaching employees and taking over rental leases of hundreds of stores once run by Future Retail

Bloomberg

April 24, 2022

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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.

Adding Future’s Big Bazaar brand of stores to its assets would have helped Seattle-based Amazon to expand its brick-and-mortar footprint across the country. Similarly, Mr Ambani was counting on the retail, wholesale, logistics and warehousing units of Future to expand the operations of Reliance Retail Ventures — part of a broader pivot from the group’s main oil refining and petrochemicals businesses.

Reliance’s decision to back out also comes after almost two years of tortuous litigation in various courts that worsened the financial health of Future Group. With no lifeline in sight to help revive its businesses, the retailer has defaulted on debt repayments forcing some of its lenders to initiate bankruptcy cases against the firm.

The setback to Reliance may be minimal after the group began poaching employees and taking over rental leases of hundreds of stores once run by Future Retail and Future Lifestyle Fashions.

“There will hardly be any impact on Reliance from the cancellation of the deal as they already have taken control of most of the Future stores,” said Kranthi Bathini, a strategist at Mumbai-based WealthMills Securities.

“Also, many employees from Future have migrated to Reliance, and hence they already have what they wanted without taking over Future.”

Last month, Amazon told India’s Supreme Court that truce talks with Future Retail to bury the dispute had failed and published notices in newspapers warning the local retailer and its founders that any transfer of assets to Reliance would trigger civil and criminal legal action.

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Ten tax points to be aware of in 2026

1. Domestic VAT refund amendments: request your refund within five years

If a business does not apply for the refund on time, they lose their credit.

2. E-invoicing in the UAE

Businesses should continue preparing for the implementation of e-invoicing in the UAE, with 2026 a preparation and transition period ahead of phased mandatory adoption. 

3. More tax audits

Tax authorities are increasingly using data already available across multiple filings to identify audit risks. 

4. More beneficial VAT and excise tax penalty regime

Tax disputes are expected to become more frequent and more structured, with clearer administrative objection and appeal processes. The UAE has adopted a new penalty regime for VAT and excise disputes, which now mirrors the penalty regime for corporate tax.

5. Greater emphasis on statutory audit

There is a greater need for the accuracy of financial statements. The International Financial Reporting Standards standards need to be strictly adhered to and, as a result, the quality of the audits will need to increase.

6. Further transfer pricing enforcement

Transfer pricing enforcement, which refers to the practice of establishing prices for internal transactions between related entities, is expected to broaden in scope. The UAE will shortly open the possibility to negotiate advance pricing agreements, or essentially rulings for transfer pricing purposes. 

7. Limited time periods for audits

Recent amendments also introduce a default five-year limitation period for tax audits and assessments, subject to specific statutory exceptions. While the standard audit and assessment period is five years, this may be extended to up to 15 years in cases involving fraud or tax evasion. 

8. Pillar 2 implementation 

Many multinational groups will begin to feel the practical effect of the Domestic Minimum Top-Up Tax (DMTT), the UAE's implementation of the OECD’s global minimum tax under Pillar 2. While the rules apply for financial years starting on or after January 1, 2025, it is 2026 that marks the transition to an operational phase.

9. Reduced compliance obligations for imported goods and services

Businesses that apply the reverse-charge mechanism for VAT purposes in the UAE may benefit from reduced compliance obligations. 

10. Substance and CbC reporting focus

Tax authorities are expected to continue strengthening the enforcement of economic substance and Country-by-Country (CbC) reporting frameworks. In the UAE, these regimes are increasingly being used as risk-assessment tools, providing tax authorities with a comprehensive view of multinational groups’ global footprints and enabling them to assess whether profits are aligned with real economic activity. 

Contributed by Thomas Vanhee and Hend Rashwan, Aurifer

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Egypt’s Copts belong to one of the world’s oldest Christian communities, with Mark the Evangelist credited with founding their church around 300 AD. Orthodox Christians account for the overwhelming majority of Christians in Egypt, with the rest mainly made up of Greek Orthodox, Catholics and Anglicans.

The community accounts for some 10 per cent of Egypt’s 100 million people, with the largest concentrations of Christians found in Cairo, Alexandria and the provinces of Minya and Assiut south of Cairo.

Egypt’s Christians have had a somewhat turbulent history in the Muslim majority Arab nation, with the community occasionally suffering outright persecution but generally living in peace with their Muslim compatriots. But radical Muslims who have first emerged in the 1970s have whipped up anti-Christian sentiments, something that has, in turn, led to an upsurge in attacks against their places of worship, church-linked facilities as well as their businesses and homes.

More recently, ISIS has vowed to go after the Christians, claiming responsibility for a series of attacks against churches packed with worshippers starting December 2016.

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Here is a look at major attacks against Egypt's Coptic Christians in recent years:

November 2: Masked gunmen riding pickup trucks opened fire on three buses carrying pilgrims to the remote desert monastery of St. Samuel the Confessor south of Cairo, killing 7 and wounding about 20. IS claimed responsibility for the attack.

May 26, 2017: Masked militants riding in three all-terrain cars open fire on a bus carrying pilgrims on their way to the Monastery of St. Samuel the Confessor, killing 29 and wounding 22. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack.

April 2017: Twin attacks by suicide bombers hit churches in the coastal city of Alexandria and the Nile Delta city of Tanta. At least 43 people are killed and scores of worshippers injured in the Palm Sunday attack, which narrowly missed a ceremony presided over by Pope Tawadros II, spiritual leader of Egypt Orthodox Copts, in Alexandria's St. Mark's Cathedral. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attacks.

February 2017: Hundreds of Egyptian Christians flee their homes in the northern part of the Sinai Peninsula, fearing attacks by ISIS. The group's North Sinai affiliate had killed at least seven Coptic Christians in the restive peninsula in less than a month.

December 2016: A bombing at a chapel adjacent to Egypt's main Coptic Christian cathedral in Cairo kills 30 people and wounds dozens during Sunday Mass in one of the deadliest attacks carried out against the religious minority in recent memory. ISIS claimed responsibility.

July 2016: Pope Tawadros II says that since 2013 there were 37 sectarian attacks on Christians in Egypt, nearly one incident a month. A Muslim mob stabs to death a 27-year-old Coptic Christian man, Fam Khalaf, in the central city of Minya over a personal feud.

May 2016: A Muslim mob ransacks and torches seven Christian homes in Minya after rumours spread that a Christian man had an affair with a Muslim woman. The elderly mother of the Christian man was stripped naked and dragged through a street by the mob.

New Year's Eve 2011: A bomb explodes in a Coptic Christian church in Alexandria as worshippers leave after a midnight mass, killing more than 20 people.

Ain Dubai in numbers

126: The length in metres of the legs supporting the structure

1 football pitch: The length of each permanent spoke is longer than a professional soccer pitch

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9,000 tonnes: The amount of steel used to construct the project.

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Breast cancer in men: the facts

1) Breast cancer is men is rare but can develop rapidly. It usually occurs in those over the ages of 60, but can occasionally affect younger men.

2) Symptoms can include a lump, discharge, swollen glands or a rash. 

3) People with a history of cancer in the family can be more susceptible. 

4) Treatments include surgery and chemotherapy but early diagnosis is the key. 

5) Anyone concerned is urged to contact their doctor

 

THE BIO

Ms Davison came to Dubai from Kerala after her marriage in 1996 when she was 21-years-old

Since 2001, Ms Davison has worked at many affordable schools such as Our Own English High School in Sharjah, and The Apple International School and Amled School in Dubai

Favourite Book: The Alchemist

Favourite quote: Failing to prepare is preparing to fail

Favourite place to Travel to: Vienna

Favourite cuisine: Italian food

Favourite Movie : Scent of a Woman

 

 

Farage on Muslim Brotherhood

Nigel Farage told Reform's annual conference that the party will proscribe the Muslim Brotherhood if he becomes Prime Minister.
"We will stop dangerous organisations with links to terrorism operating in our country," he said. "Quite why we've been so gutless about this – both Labour and Conservative – I don't know.
“All across the Middle East, countries have banned and proscribed the Muslim Brotherhood as a dangerous organisation. We will do the very same.”
It is 10 years since a ground-breaking report into the Muslim Brotherhood by Sir John Jenkins.
Among the former diplomat's findings was an assessment that “the use of extreme violence in the pursuit of the perfect Islamic society” has “never been institutionally disowned” by the movement.
The prime minister at the time, David Cameron, who commissioned the report, said membership or association with the Muslim Brotherhood was a "possible indicator of extremism" but it would not be banned.

Bookshops: A Reader's History by Jorge Carrión (translated from the Spanish by Peter Bush),
Biblioasis

Updated: April 24, 2022, 7:24 AM
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