After nearly six months without a permanent CEO to head up its operations, Spar has appointed Angelo Swartz, who has been with the JSE-listed retailer for 16 years, to take on the top job.
The company said on Friday that Swartz, who also previously worked for Woolworths and is currently Spar’s divisional MD for its KwaZulu-Natal division, would take up the executive director role from 1 October.
He would take on the role of Spar Guild chairperson from 1 September – referring to the nonprofit structure that governs the mutual interests of Spar and retailers.
It said Swartz was “highly respected in the Spar group, with a deep knowledge of the South African market”.
The group has also beefed up its executive team through the creation of the new role of group chief operating officer, appointing Megan Pydigadu to head up this position.
“This position will strengthen the group’s executive team and provide support to the CEO on the coordination and oversight of the operational and functional activities of the group as well as retailer profitability,” Spar said in a statement.
Shares in the company were just under 1% higher in morning trade on Friday but have fallen by about a fifth in the past year. Click here for details of its shares as well as other info.
Meanwhile Mike Bosman, who has been in a caretaker CEO role since the shock retirement of Brett Botten at the end of January, will revert back to being Spar’s independent nonexecutive chair, a role he had only just been appointed to in December last year.
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Bosman, who is also Spur Corporation’s chair and a professional airline pilot, will also continue to serve as independent nonexecutive chair on Spar’s major foreign subsidiary boards.
The appointments will likely bring some certainty for Spar, which between November and December last year was engulfed in a crisis after allegations it discriminated against black retailers, and news of a dispute with a family that owned a chain of Spar stores came to light.
Additionally, an independent investigation flagged that fictitious loans had been signed off within the group, while other corporate governance concerns were raised about Graham O’Connor being appointed chair in March 2021, just one month after he retired as CEO.
READ | Spar CEO Brett Botten to retire at month-end amid board shakeup
The King codes of governance recommend a break of service of at least three years. O’Connor has since resigned. Then at the end of January, Botten retired just two years after taking on the CEO role, with Bosman then being requested by the board to lead the company on an interim basis.
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