Future Retail (FRL) on Wednesday said it is committed to getting back the hundreds of stores that have been taken over by the Reliance Group and claimed that the “drastic and unilateral action” taken by Reliance has come as a surprise.

In a regulatory filing, FRL said its board has taken strong objection to such action by Reliance Group and has put it on notice to reconsider all other actions initiated over the last few days. FRL’s board has also notified Reliance Group that assets such as store fixtures, store infrastructure, merchandise, inventory, etc, belonging to FRL and lying inside these stores are hypothecated as security in favour of the FRL lenders. The board has called upon Reliance Group to ensure that the possession of the secured assets is not transferred and retained unharmed for the benefit of the lenders.

FRL said post the Reliance Retail merger announcement in August last year, it had been unable to raise capital and had failed to make some repayments to lenders. Subsequently, several lessors had issued termination notices and filed suits to recover their dues and also to evict FRL. To keep the business afloat and protect the interests of all shareholders, Reliance had signed fresh leases with these lessors and sub-leased them, on a leave-and-licence basis, to FRL.

Reliance Retail has taken steps to terminate the sub-leases of 947 Future Group’s stores and proposes to reopen them after reconciling the stock and inventory positions and rebranding them. Post this, the stores are expected to be renamed.

The Singapore International Arbitration Centre’s Emergency Arbitrator (EA) had restrained FRL from going ahead with its Rs 24,713-crore merger with Reliance Retail. Amazon, which is in the midst of a legal battle with FRL, over the transfer of assets to Reliance Retail in an agreement reached last year in August, said on Tuesday in a public notice that any attempt by FRL and its promoters to transfer or dispose off assets would be in violation of the orders of the SIAC’s order. In early March, the SC had asked Amazon and FRL to try and reach an out-of-court settlement but the discussions proved inconclusive.

Anxious about the transfer of stores, lenders to FRL on Tuesday moved to protect their loans. While no decision has been taken banks are believed to be contemplating taking the Debt recovery Tribunal (DRT) route rather than opting a CIRP (corporate insolvency resolution plan). In Wednesday’s letter to the exchanges, FRL wrote it has notified the Reliance Group that assets such as store infrastructure, fixtures merchandise and inventory are hypothecated as security in favour of the FRL lenders. It said it had asked Reliance Group to ensure these are not transferred.

Amazon on Wednesday asked the Supreme Court to restrain Reliance Retail from opening any new store in place of FRL’s Big Bazar.