{"id":883348,"date":"2026-11-09T14:40:51","date_gmt":"2026-11-09T12:40:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=883348"},"modified":"2026-11-09T14:40:54","modified_gmt":"2026-11-09T12:40:54","slug":"r117-million-win-for-shoprite-ceo-after-boardroom-battle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/business\/883348\/r117-million-win-for-shoprite-ceo-after-boardroom-battle\/","title":{"rendered":"R117 million win for Shoprite CEO after boardroom battle"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Shoprite investors approved the remuneration policy for the company&#8217;s CEO, Pieter Engelbrecht, despite calls from international advisory groups to vote against it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>On Friday, 6 November 2026, shareholders voted in favour of the proposed CEO remuneration policy, which resulted in Engelbrecht&#8217;s total remuneration rising to roughly R117 million.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The policy introduced a new long-term incentive scheme to the CEO&#8217;s pay package, which some investors said was <a href=\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/business\/882492\/trouble-over-shoprites-plan-to-award-ceo-with-r36-4-million-on-top-of-r117-million-pay-package\/\">not adequately justified<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Two of the world&#8217;s largest shareholder proxy advisor services, Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) and Glass Lewis &amp; Co., previously said the remuneration plan should be rejected.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This was due to questions regarding &#8220;the repeated use of exceptional awards on top of Shoprite\u2019s existing incentive programmes&#8221;, according to Bloomberg.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>ISS argued that Shoprite had not adequately justified the additional incentives and raised concerns about a special modifier that was applied to trigger a short-term incentive payment, despite actual performance falling below the target threshold.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Several US investors in Shoprite said they would listen to the advice of these advisory groups, including:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>The State Board of Administration of the Florida Retirement System <\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Canada\u2019s British Columbia Investment Management <\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>The California Public Employees\u2019 Retirement System <\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>The Christian Brothers Investment Services <\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>The California State Teachers Retirement System<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Despite objections from these groups, Shoprite ultimately passed the resolution approving the CEO remuneration policy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The resolution passed with 70.91% for and 29.09% against, representing 88.28% of the company&#8217;s total issued shares.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>While roughly 71% of the shares voted were in favour of the remuneration policy, the vote was much closer by the number of ordinary shares voted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>53.81% of ordinary shares voted for the resolution, while 46.19% voted against, and 100% of deferred shares voted in its favour.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>These deferred shares are largely held by billionaire Christo Wiese, Shoprite&#8217;s former chairman, and are held alongside ordinary shares.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>These shares give Wiese approximately 41% of the voting rights in Shoprite, aiding the passage of the controversial remuneration resolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Wiese was a strong supporter of the remuneration policy and said there was a sufficient rationale for its passing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He also sits on the company&#8217;s remuneration committee and said the policy &#8220;isn\u2019t something that was just decided in two seconds&#8221;.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The R117 million remuneration package for Engelbrecht comes on the back of a <a href=\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/business\/873057\/south-africas-largest-retailer-selling-and-closing-stores\/\">strong performance<\/a> by Shoprite in its last financial year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Group&#8217;s revenue increased by approximately 7.1% to R274 billion for the year ended 28 June 2026, while operating profit increased by 5.7%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>(Reported with Bloomberg)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Shoprite investors have passed a controversial resolution which will boost the CEOs total remuneration to approximately R117 million.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":131,"featured_media":860154,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"posted","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"2119773508888629687","_sma_facebook_post_id":"191437357620492_2266927730794292","_sma_instagram_post_id":"17913918720474681","_sma_x_attempts":1,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9872],"tags":[1850,1510,21554,7520],"class_list":["post-883348","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-bloomberg","tag-iss","tag-pieter-engelbrecht","tag-shoprite"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/883348","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/131"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=883348"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/883348\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":883394,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/883348\/revisions\/883394"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/860154"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=883348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=883348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=883348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}