The split that everyone's watching ABF is poised to reveal whether it'll demerge Primark from its food business. On the surface, it makes sense. You've got a fashion retailer and food operations that operate in completely different worlds. Different customers, different margins, different growth trajectories. So why not separate them? I've watched this thinking play out dozens of times with people running their own operations. A business gets to a certain size, starts pulling in different directions, and someone says: maybe we need to split this up. Here's what I think: most of the time, that's the wrong answer to the right problem. The problem isn't the structure When I sit down with someone who's considering a split, I always ask the same thing first. What's actually broken? Is it that the two parts genuinely can't coexist? Or is it that you've lost visibility over what each part is doing? Those are very different problems. I've seen people break up perfectly functional operations because they couldn't see the wood for the trees. One division was eating resources the other needed. One was moving fast while the other was stuck in old processes. One was profitable and the other was a drag. So they thought: separate them, and suddenly everything will work. Sometimes it does. Usually it doesn't. What actually happened is they finally had to fix the thing they've been avoiding. With ABF, the case looks different on paper. Primark operates on thin margins with massive scale and fast inventory turnover. The food business has different supply chains, different seasonality, different investor expectations. That's a real structural difference, not just a management problem. But in a challenging business environment, as the retail analysts have said, the temptation to demerge often comes because you're drowning. When mortgage rates were spiking and energy costs were wild, running two completely different operations under one roof got harder. It's easier to blame the structure than to fix the actual operations. What actually breaks when you split A demerger costs money. Real money. You're duplicating functions: finance teams, HR, compliance, IT infrastructure. You're losing the benefit of shared procurement. You're creating two separate balance sheets that might not be as attractive to investors or lenders as one combined one was. I worked with a client a few years back who was convinced they needed to split their consulting business from their software arm. The software was growing faster and had different economics. The consulting was steady but slower. So they separated them. Two years in, they realised they'd lost 40% of their consulting revenue because clients wanted both services bundled together. The separation had killed the thing that made the consulting valuable. And now they were running two smaller, less competitive operations instead of one larger one. They merged back together. It cost them roughly £180,000 to undo the split. The question you need to ask isn't: are these two businesses different? They might be. The question is: are they more valuable together or apart? When a split actually makes sense It does make sense sometimes. If one part of your operation is genuinely holding the other back. If you're trying to sell one bit and a buyer won't touch it because it's bundled with something else. If you're in a market where investors expect pure plays, not conglomerates. If the operational demands are so different that you're constantly making compromises. For ABF, Primark is a retail machine that needs speed and scale. The food business is more traditional, more about supply chain efficiency and relationships. Those demands do genuinely conflict. Primark might move faster as a standalone. The food business might attract different capital if it's not weighed down by a fashion retailer. But here's what I'd do before committing to that: I'd run a proper decision matrix. Map out what you actually lose versus what you gain. Not the theoretical gains. The actual ones. Will Primark really grow faster alone, or will it lose the financial stability the group gives it? Will the food business really attract better investors, or will it just be a smaller, less interesting target? I use a Decision Matrix tool with clients exactly for this. You list your criteria: cost of split, time to execute, impact on each division, investor attractiveness, operational efficiency. You score each option. You stop making decisions based on what feels right and start making them based on what the numbers say. The real question Here's what I actually think. ABF should demerge if and only if Primark can operate more effectively as a standalone company. Not if it sounds nice. Not if investors are asking for pure plays. Only if the numbers show it'll be genuinely better. For you, the same rule applies. If you're thinking about splitting your business, start by being honest about why. Is it because two operations genuinely need different strategies, different capital, different management? Or is it because you've lost control and separation feels like the answer? One is a legitimate strategic decision. The other is avoidance dressed up as strategy. What to do this week If you're running multiple operations and wondering whether they should stay together, spend 30 minutes mapping what each part of your business actually needs to succeed. Different growth rates? Different customer types? Different margins? Write them down. Then ask yourself: would splitting them let me meet those needs better, or would it just create new problems? If you're genuinely unsure, build a quick decision matrix. List the key factors that matter: cost, time, operational efficiency, investor appeal, financial stability. Score each option on each factor. Don't overthink it. Just get the data visible so you can stop guessing. Most importantly, talk to someone who's actually done this. Not a theorist. Someone who's lived through a split and can tell you what they'd do differently.