South Africa’s richest woman could walk away from her own R5 billion company
Magda Wierzycka, the founder and chief executive of Sygnia, says she may have to reconsider her future at the asset manager if shareholders reject a controversial share incentive scheme.
She added that she will never again work for other people without carefully considering whether it is worth her while.
Magda was speaking in an interview with BizNews ahead of a special shareholder meeting to vote on the proposed scheme.
She said the dispute had brought her back to a personal conviction she formed early in her career, which is that she would never work for someone else again.
“When I left Coronation Fund Managers, I was 31 years old. I resigned. There was a whole lot of emotion, and I was driving home in a car when I said to myself, I will never, ever work for anyone else again. Ever,” she said.
Wierzycka said she had accepted the introduction of outside shareholders when Sygnia listed.
Sygnia is a South African financial services group headquartered in Cape Town, with offices in Johannesburg, Durban, and London.
The company provides asset management, investment administration, and savings products to institutional and retail investors, and is listed on both the JSE and A2X—with a market capitalisation of over R5 billion.
However, the current disagreement had made her reconsider the implications of being accountable to investors, even while holding a significant stake in the business.
She stressed that her comments should not be interpreted as an immediate threat of resignation, but said that a rejection of the scheme would require serious reflection. “It’s not a threat. I mean, it’s just I’m putting it out there,” she said.
“I will have to look at it and go, well, do I want to, whether it’s a vote of no confidence in the decision-making I’m making or not, I have to look at it very carefully.”
Wierzycka said she would have to consider the percentage of shareholders voting against the proposal and think carefully about whether remaining in the role would work for her personally.
“I don’t bluff”
The proposed scheme would expand Sygnia’s existing share option programme, which has been in place since 2019, allowing the company to allocate more options and raise the allocation threshold.
Wierzycka said the objective was to retain and reward the executives who had helped build the business, many of whom had been with the company for more than a decade.
“The only reason to do that is to incentivise and lock in our executives and executive team,” she said.
She argued that the existing arrangements were insufficient to attract and retain senior executives in a competitive financial services industry, citing Sygnia’s difficulty in recruiting a chief financial officer.
The scheme was also intended to address the absence of an appropriate incentive structure for a future chief executive, should she leave the company.
“If I fall under the bus tomorrow, we don’t have a share option scheme that would attract a new CEO and reward a new CEO. We have nothing,” she said.
Wierzycka acknowledged that she would benefit from the expanded scheme, but maintained that the proposal was about the long-term interests of the company as well as her own remuneration.
“I’m not denying for a second, neither is the board, that I would benefit from that scheme as a CEO,” she said.
However, the possibility of leaving Sygnia is not merely theoretical. She said she had a 30-day notice period and no contractual restriction preventing her from launching a competing business.
Wierzycka is also developing an investment venture focused on gaining access to shares in international technology companies, including Anthropic, OpenAI and SpaceX, before they list publicly.
She said the opportunity could be pursued under Sygnia’s umbrella or independently, and that she believed it had significant potential.
“The saddest thing to me is that I can make more money out of that than I’ve made out of Sygnia over 20 years,” she said.
She also rejected the idea that Sygnia was a family legacy that would necessarily keep her at the company.
Her two sons are pursuing careers and further studies in the United States, and she said neither intended to return to South Africa. “It’s not my baby, by the way, and it’s not a family legacy,” she said.
Although she said she loved Sygnia, Wierzycka indicated that she was not prepared to remain indefinitely simply because she founded it.
“I do believe I can personally make substantial money if that matters,” she said, adding that her future decisions would also depend on intellectual stimulation and the opportunity to pursue new ideas.
Wierzycka emphasised that she was not saying she would automatically leave if shareholders rejected the scheme. However, the outcome would force her to reconsider her position.
“People always go and say, ‘Yeah, she’s bluffing.’ I don’t bluff,” she said.
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