Note: After Supreme Court verdict, Biyani’s Future tense

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Editor's note: This bit is important and timely, so we are breaking our regular publishing schedule for this note. It’s been a nasty day for Kishore Biyani, the architect of modern retail in India. This morning,  the Supreme Court held that an emergency arbitration award by the Singapore International Arbitration Centre that stalled the sale of his Future Group’s retail business to Reliance Industries was indeed valid, putting the deal in abeyance. That will also mean that the final verdict in the arbitration case will also be enforceable in India and Biyani has to wait for this before he can get on with life. Until then the uncertainty around his retail business, which has been surviving on the largesse of lenders and suppliers, is likely to escalate, perhaps even leading to it going bankrupt if no white knight comes riding to its rescue. The deal, when it was announced last August, was clearly the biggest consolidation in the Indian retail industry. The pioneer of modern retail and second largest retailer was merging with Reliance, which was the biggest player in the country …