Primark chief executive Paul Marchant has resigned following a company investigation into his behaviour toward a woman “in a social environment”, the budget fashion chain’s owner Associated British Foods announced Monday.
His resignation, which takes immediate effect, comes after he spent 16 years as Primark’s CEO, overseeing its expansion in Europe and into the United States.
“Marchant cooperated with the investigation, acknowledged his error of judgement and accepts that his actions fell below the standards expected by ABF,” the company said in a statement.
“He has made an apology to the individual concerned,” the group added.
ABF said it continues to offer support to the person who brought his behaviour to its attention.
The group did not immediately provide further details when contacted by AFP.
“I am immensely disappointed,” George Weston, chief executive of ABF, said in the statement.
He added that “our culture has to be, and is, bigger than any one individual”.
Marchant will be replaced on an interim basis by Eoin Tonge, ABF’s chief financial officer.
A plunging stock market may make it painful to check your 401(k), but as investors found out this week it was when bonds started plunging (and yields, which move inversely to bond prices, starting spiking) that things got really bad. So bad, in fact, that Trump hit his pain threshold and announced a 90-day pause on most tariffs. Why are bond yields, of all things, so important? For retail investors, it’s likely something they haven’t paid much attention to in the past. But the 10-year Treasury yield is a benchmark that directly influences borrowing costs for all U.S. consumers, and when it heads in the wrong direction, that has major implications for the U.S. economy.
What are bonds?
Bonds are loans where an investor lends money to an entity, usually a corporation, government or organization. Borrowers typically pay a fixed interest rate over a period of time. Bonds are considered fixed income financial instruments and are geared to investors who want stable returns.
Why are 10-year and 30-year Treasury notes popular bonds?
The safest of all bonds are U.S. Treasuries because they are backed by the U.S. government. The 10-year and 30-year Treasury notes are some of the more popular bonds, providing fixed-income payments every six months and guaranteeing a return of principal if investors hold the bond until maturity. The 10-year Treasury is the most liquid and widely traded bond in the world. U.S. Treasuries are a very large component of the U.S. bond market, but don’t represent the entire U.S. bond market.
Why did investors get spooked and begin offloading bonds?
On April 2, President Trump introduced his “Liberation Day” tariffs which imposed taxes on nearly all products that are imported from other countries. The tariffs are expected to cause inflation to rise over the short term. They also caused a huge selloff in the broad market, with the value of U.S. listed stocks plunging by $7.7 trillion in value since April 2, according to the Wall Street Journal. Usually when a stock selloff occurs, investors buy bonds, especially U.S. Treasuries, because they’re considered safer. But that didn’t happen this time. Investors began unloading bonds late last week. That caused the yield for the 10-year Treasury to climb above 4% on Tuesday and then it jumped to 4.5% early Wednesday. Then Trump announced a 90-day pause on some tariffs, causing the S&P 500 to soar 9.5% and the Nasdaq Composite to skyrocket more than 12%. The bond market found some relief at that point, with the yield dropping to 4.34% on the 10-year by Wednesday afternoon. The dramatic moves had even seasoned investors whipsawed. “I am a bit surprised at both the speed and magnitude of the moves in the bond market,” noted Dominic Pappalardo, chief multi-asset strategist at Morningstar Wealth.
Why is the bond selloff important?
Basically, when investors sell 10-year Treasury notes, bond prices fall, and the yield rises. When Treasury bond yields climb, so do all other interest rates. The 10-year Treasury weighs heavily on what consumers are charged for mortgages, auto loans, and credit cards, said Tom Simons, chief U.S. economist at Jefferies.
High net worth investors and hedge funds will likely lose a lot of money, Simons said. But for consumers, interest rates will probably stay high because “lenders won’t have confidence that Treasuries will stay at lower yields over time,” he said.
Who owns Treasuries?
Ownership of Treasuries is spread out all over the world and include sovereign wealth funds, foreign central banks, pension funds, domestic banks, insurance companies, and hedge funds. Japan, China and the U.K. are said to be the largest holders of Treasuries.
Could the bond selloff get worse?
Absolutely. On Thursday, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics is expected to release its monthly Consumer Price Index, or CPI, which tracks price changes in goods and services commonly bought by households. If the CPI shows that inflation in March was higher than expected, that will put further upward pressure on bond yields, likely causing bond prices to come down even further, Pappalardo said. “It would push interest rates higher without a doubt if that were to occur,” he said.
The current 10-year Treasury yield is 4.34 but it has gone much higher. In 1981, when inflation was high, the yield hit 15.84%.
Has a selloff of both bonds and stocks happened before?
Yes. The most recent example is in 2022, when the yield for the 10-year Treasury hit about 3.9% that December, up from around 1.5% at the start of the year. The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq Composite also performed poorly that year.
What can the Federal Reserve do?
In 2022, high inflation spurred the Federal Reserve to step in and raise interest rates seven times that year. This slowed economic activity and “helped cool down inflation,” said Morningstar’s Pappalardo. It’s unclear if the Fed will take action this time. If the Fed rushed out and hiked interest rates to cool inflation, it would “trigger a massive economic downturn,” he said. But if they lowered interest rates to support economic activity, they risk causing inflation to increase even faster. “The Fed is really caught in a conundrum where they’re almost a bit paralyzed,” Pappalardo said. The futures markets are predicting a 40% chance that the Fed cuts rates at its next meeting in May, he said. But given how quickly market conditions are changing, that timeframe seems a world away.
Mark Zuckerberg, Cristiano Ronaldo, Jennifer Aniston, and Prince Harry have one thing in common: They all own Oura Rings.
The Finnish company Oura, founded in 2013, is on the verge of a growth spurt as its niche innovation in wearable tech heads for the mainstream. Demand has boomed recently, with sales set to double this year and nearing the $500 million mark.
Oura just capped off a Series D funding round in December led by Fidelity Management, which values the company at $5.2 billion. The capital injection is a key milestone, given that Oura was valued at half that figure just two years ago.
The global wearable tech market is set to expand by 14.6% by the end of the decade. Of that group, smart glasses and rings are the ones seeing the most growth.
This could be just the beginning of Oura’s popularity as the company also has plans to go “beyond the ring” with its new influx of funding, CEO Tom Hale said.
“We’re seeing kind of cultural relevance here in that Oura is becoming a shorthand for how you’re doing. It’s like the doctor’s note that isn’t a doctor’s note,” Hale told Fortune‘s Leadership Next podcast earlier this year.
So, what made Oura a worthy competitor to the Apple Watches of the world?
Leaning into sleep
Oura was founded in Finland by Petteri Lahtela, Markku Koskela, and Kari Kivela, who wanted to find a way to gather wellness information on one’s finger.
In 2015, the young startup launched a Kickstarter campaign (like Peloton and Allbirds did), raising over $650,000 by the end and exceeding its goal sixfold. The following year, Oura won a CES Innovation Award that helped establish it as an emerging tech company.
From its early days, Oura’s approach to overall wellness lured many users amid a growing focus on health. More specifically, the Oura Ring gave people insights on their sleep levels, which hit a “sweet spot with a particular customer set,” Hale said, according to the Financial Times.
Oura’s app shows its users a “Readiness Score,” a number from one to 100 that reveals their preparedness for the day based on various health metrics, including sleep quality, heart rate, body temperature, and more.
“Wearable tech is for anyone who wants to better understand the state of their health and live more optimally for longer,” Hale said.
MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA – OCTOBER 18: Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex wearing a Oura Health fitness tracker ring and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex walk at South Melbourne Beach on October 18, 2018 in Melbourne, Australia. BeachPatrol is a network of volunteers who are passionate about keeping Melbourne’s beaches and foreshores clear of litter to reduce the negative impact of litter on the marine environment and food chain, and provide a safe environment for the public to enjoy their local beach.The Duke and Duchess of Sussex are on their official 16-day Autumn tour visiting cities in Australia, Fiji, Tonga and New Zealand. (Photo by Scott Barbour/Getty Images)
Smartwatches from Apple or Garmin serve daily utility or track exercise but aren’t comfortable to wear all day long. They may also need to be charged more frequently. On the other hand, Oura Rings fit more seamlessly as an accessory and have a longer battery life.
The latest version, the Oura Ring 4, which launched in October, aims to be even sleeker in its look and feel.
Don’t let the size of Oura’s devices fool you into thinking they cost less. They follow a subscription model that costs $6 a month, while the ring costs upwards of $350.
Put a ring on it
Wellness and longevity are hot topics—and Oura is playing the long game in the tech market by catering to these trends.
Celebrities have been spotted wearing Oura Rings, a culmination of the overall clout the device has gathered over the past decade. CEOs think the device boosts their performance by giving them specifics on their energy levels throughout the day.
For now, Oura is a leader in the tech it pioneered. Hale confidently wrote off Apple foraying into the wearable ring market, leaving the Finnish company to contend with a small but growing pool of rivals.
However, Hale has noticed people pairing up an Oura ring with another wearable—often times, an Apple Watch, he told Fortune.
Competitors are in plenty: for instance, this summer Samsung launched a Galaxy Ring, which doesn’t charge a subscription fee and is made by one of the biggest tech companies globally. Still, Hale is unfazed by the competition; he argues that it further underscores the unique value of this category of wearable tech.
Meanwhile, the Oura Ring is finding new ways to be indispensable: It‘s been used in marriage proposals and indicated how stressed Americans were in the lead-up to Donald Trump’s election.
Women are Oura’s fastest-growing segment, with those between the ages of 25 and 34 representing a third of the women using its rings. Following Trump’s victory, Hale quelled concerns about the privacy of medical data, assuring users that their information would be kept private.
“Our business model is we serve you and our goal in serving you is to improve your health,” Hale told Fortune. “You think about like some of our competition, maybe they’re not quite so scrupulous or maybe they just have stronger incentives to actually, do something with that data that’s not, strictly speaking, in the interests of your health. We are 100% focused on it.”
A version of this story was originally published on Fortune.com on Dec. 20, 2024.
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