Primark boss takes 50% pay cut as pandemic lockdown continues

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
Apr 3, 2020

Primark became the latest retailer on Friday for its leaders to show solidarity with its workforce as parent company Associated British Foods announced a pay cut for bosses.

It said the top ABF directors would see their base pay temporarily reduced by 50% and the chief executive of Primark, Paul Marchant, has asked for his base pay to be cut by half too.

ABF also said that bonuses relating to the current financial year won't be paid to its executive directors and the non-executive directors of its board have decided that their fees should be reduced temporarily by 25%.  

Primark is the part of the ABF business that's suffering the most with the group having earlier said that its foods operations have been relatively unscathed so far. 

The director pay cuts come amid an unprecedented crisis for global economies, in which both consumers and the governments who are having to think of solutions to the crisis, are expecting company bosses to make sacrifices. Given that many governments are subsidising worker salaries, as well as introducing other financial measures, there is huge pressure on management teams to be seen to be doing their bit. 

This has led a number of companies to announce pay cuts temporarily for the executive team, including Frasers Group and Arcadia this week.