17 December 2022, Mumbai
The deadline to bid for Future Retail may be extended by a month.
Several interested buyers for the debt-ridden company have sought more due-diligence time and clarity on the quantum of verified creditor liabilities. The verification process for the amounts claimed by various Future Retail creditors is not yet complete.So a request was made to the resolution professional to extend the timeline. The original deadline for submission of final bids was December 15.
A court-appointed resolution professional selected 13 entities as potential bidders for Future Retail on November 20 after they submitted expressions of interest (EoIs), with none of the interested parties drawing objections from any quarter.This would be the second extension in the sale process. In October, the resolution professional had extended the last date for prospective buyers to submit expressions of interest by nearly two weeks due to a somewhat circumspect bidding interest back then.
The selected potential bidders include Reliance Retail Ventures, April Moon Retail (a joint venture between Adani Group and Flemingo Group), WH Smith Travel and Dharampal Satyapal.
Future Retail has 302 stores (30 large-format and 272 small-format outlets), but footfalls have dropped drastically at the outlets being operated due to poor inventory and warehousing space. Some of the outlets have also been shut down.
