Eoin Tonge: The finance chief steering Primark toward life without ABF

On April 21, the British food and retail group Associated British Foods (ABF) confirmed what investors had been circling for months: Primark, the Dublin-headquartered value fashion chain trading as Penneys in Ireland, would be split from the group's food, sugar and grocery businesses and listed as its own FTSE 100 company. The separation, expected to complete by the end of 2027, hands Eoin Tonge, confirmed as Primark's permanent chief executive in March, a company that must justify its own existence to public markets for the first time — at a moment when like-for-like sales were falling and price perception had slipped. "95 percent of what we've got to do here doesn't change if we're public [company] or not," Tonge told the Irish Times days before the announcement. The other 5 percent is the part investors will be watching.

An engineer's read on risk

Tonge grew up around Clonskeagh and Mount Merrion in Dublin, one of five children of an electrical contractor who repaired transformers from his own factory. "He was a hard worker and I worked with him all my youth. I'm pretty sure I got my work ethic from him, and from my mother," Tonge said. He attended Catholic University School on Leeson Street and took a first-class honours engineering degree at University College Dublin, then joined Goldman Sachs in 1994 at 21. "It's the one decision I still can't really fathom," he recalled of the move into banking. "My final year project was on AI in 1994. It was called artificial neural networks at the time and I think Goldmans thought I had some way of predicting the future and were quite excited." He spent the next decade in finance, treasury and capital markets roles across London, Hong Kong and New York.

From Greencore's sugar exit to Primark's top job

Tonge joined Irish food group Greencore in 2006 as group capital markets director, becoming, in his words, chief executive Patrick Coveney's "first hire" as the business pivoted out of sugar refining and into convenience food. Fourteen years and several roles later — managing director of the grocery division, chief strategy officer, chief financial officer — he left for the British retailer Marks & Spencer as chief financial officer in June 2020, joining a business mid-turnaround under chairman Archie Norman. Norman later credited him with restoring "financial controls, reporting, and financial discipline" during the retailer's recovery. Two and a half years on, ABF recruited him as group finance director, a post he took up in April 2023. When Primark's long-serving chief executive, Paul Marchant, resigned in March 2025 following an investigation into alleged inappropriate behaviour toward a woman — conduct he himself acknowledged had "fallen below the standards expected" — Tonge stepped in as interim boss. He was confirmed permanently on March 5, 2026. ABF chairman Michael McLintock said Tonge's "financial acumen and strategic clarity" gave him "the right breadth of qualities and experience to develop and grow Primark."

Bringing Penneys back to what Penneys was

Tonge's strategy rests on a contested premise: that Primark's problem is not its absence from e-commerce but a dilution of its value message. "We were the value disrupter on the high street and in town centres," he told the Irish Times. "People copied us and we've got to remind people who the original was." In July 2026, Primark launched "Iconic Value," cutting prices by up to 29% across hundreds of lines. "Value is about more than price," Tonge wrote on LinkedIn at the launch. "It's about giving customers confidence that the products they buy look great, fit well and last. At Primark, we believe customers shouldn't have to compromise." Writing separately in Retail Week, he argued that "the most disruptive retailers of the future won't simply be those offering the lowest prices. They'll be the ones that fundamentally change what customers can expect to get for those prices." On the absence of home delivery, he is unapologetic: "The economics of online are something you have to go in with your eyes wide open... it's expensive to deliver and to fulfil the order, and you've got the cannibalisation of your bricks and mortar."

A record still being written

In the 24 weeks to February 28, 2026, Primark’s sales rose 2 percent to 4.7 billion pounds, driven by new stores, while like-for-like sales fell 2.7 percent and the adjusted operating margin slipped to 10.1 percent from 12.1 percent. Trading firmed slightly by the third quarter: sales grew 3 percent (constant currency), though like-for-like sales were still down 2.2 percent. Against that backdrop, Tonge has pushed international expansion — new stores in Kuwait, Dubai, Bahrain and Qatar, and a flagship opening on Manhattan’s Herald Square in May 2026 — and created a new chief commercial officer role, hiring former H&M Group executive Filip Ekvall to unify product, retail, digital and customer functions from September 1, 2026. ABF chief executive George Weston said Tonge’s early changes were “already having a tangible benefit in a challenging environment,” though ABF’s own market value had fallen almost 12 percent since the profit warning in January 2026 (with further declines tied to demerger speculation), and analysts remain unconvinced the turnaround is secure.

Cautious coverage, no scandal attached

Tonge himself generates modest, largely trade-press coverage — profile interviews in the Irish Times, financial reporting in Drapers and WWD, and analyst commentary around the demerger — rather than tabloid attention. The controversy in the file belongs to the company and the deal rather than to him personally: Deutsche Bank's Adam Cochrane warned that "any excitement of the Primark demerger will remain subdued until the like-for-like sales improve," while eToro's Adam Vettese called the timing the "worst possible moment" given competition from Shein and Temu. Robyn Duffy of RSM UK noted that once independent, Primark will be "fully exposed to shifts in consumer discretionary spending" without ABF's food business to cushion it.

Marathon man, in his own clothes

Tonge is married with three children — one born in Dublin, one in New York, one in Hong Kong, a legacy of his Goldman Sachs years. He lives in Leeds despite running a Dublin-headquartered company, and describes his pastimes simply: "Love rugby. And running," he told the Irish Times. He has completed 11 marathons, five of them in Dublin. He wears Primark clothing head to toe, at work and at home: "I always wear Penneys, at home as well. It's part of the culture, our people want to wear Penneys, nobody's forced to wear them." On his own management style, he is blunt: "I want to be clear and quite direct but apply common sense to all decisions I have to make... everyone knows I'm switched and won't beat around the bush. But I'll do it nicely."

In five years

Asked to picture Primark five years out, Tonge does not hedge: "I think it will be a lot bigger. It will be in more countries. We will be a little more bespoke in each country. It will still feel like a Primark whether you're in Romania or El Paso but it will feel more local." Whether that confidence survives Primark's first year as a public company, answerable to shareholders without ABF's groceries to lean on, is the question his tenure will actually be judged on.

This article was written with the assistance of AI.