Spar Group chair Mike Bosman has shared additional details and context around the “sudden’ departure of CEO Angelo Swartz at the end of February.
Speaking at the group’s AGM on Wednesday, Bosman admitted that while the group has had three CEOs in the past three years, the reality of these leadership changes is a little more nuanced.
Swartz steps down as Spar CEO
Bosman revealed to shareholders that Swartz asked to see him in Cape Town in early January and at this meeting he explained that “he was feeling very uncomfortable and he’d had a break but wasn’t feeling refreshed”.
“He felt that the pressures on him were enormous” and since the year-end results released towards the end of 2025 “he’d really taken a battering personally”.
“He has a young daughter who’s six years old; he’s a single dad. He felt that he’d given everything to the business, and he felt that the pace of the change in the business needed to be accelerated.”
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Bosman said Swartz was also “obviously very concerned that the share price had deteriorated so significantly”.
Across 2025, the share price of the wholesaler and retailer had declined 35%.
The chair told investors that Swartz was also “very disappointed” about its trading performance in the peak November and Black Friday period – “and to a certain extent I think he took that personally, which was probably unnecessary”.
Spar reported like-for-like retail sales growth of 2.25% in South Africa for the 18 weeks to the end of January (effectively October to January) which, while the strongest in recent years, did come at a cost.
Its gross margin declined as a result, partially due to its “targeted promotional strategy over the Black Friday period”.
Because Swartz had been with the business for over a decade prior to his CEO appointment, Bosman says he “had close relationships with all the retailers” which added to the strain on him “because all the retailers would call him directly”.
This, while he was “trying to lead the exit of the group from Poland and Switzerland and also deal with numerous other critical issues” like the recovery of the KwaZulu-Natal business following the disruption caused by the botched implementation of the SAP enterprise resource planning system.
“There came a moment when he felt that the time was appropriate to pass the baton on to the next person, and I think we must respect that.”
In an ideal world …
Bosman added that the departure of Swartz was “unexpected” and “sudden”, and that “under different circumstances, it would have been brilliant to have been able to consult with retailers, suppliers and staff” before he left.
But the group is bound by JSE listings regulations.
“It was price-sensitive information and so we had no choice but … to break the news.” The group announced Swartz’s departure on 20 February, alongside the trading update.
Bosman provided additional context to Swartz’s original appointment in 2023.
He said the group received “about 100” applications for the CEO role and the board studied “about 50 of them”.
“At that time, Angelo Swartz was by far the best candidate. He was internal, knew the business inside out, is highly respected and … a really great guy to work with.
“Angelo and I speak every week, sometimes several times a week and sometimes several times a day. We’ve done that since he was appointed, and we have a very close working relationship.
“I’m very sad that he’s leaving.”
Bosman is clear that the group’s board has succession plans in place “at all times” and that these are designed in two ways:
- An emergency plan for “who would be responsible from tomorrow morning” if a senior leader became incapacitated tonight; along with
- A long-term succession plan.
Bosman says The Spar Group is “also a one-of-a-kind business in South Africa because we’re both a wholesaler and a retailer”.
“So in some ways we are aligned to a franchise-type business with all of our independent retailers” who are not forced to source their stock from the group.
“It was very important to have somebody coming into that role who really understands how the retailers think.”
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He also argues that the group is a complex one, which necessitated the right appointment. In Ireland, it has six retail brands, a wholesale arm and a food services business. In southern Africa, it has Build it with 400 stores, liquor chain Tops with “close to 800 stores”, six regional distribution centres, and then 2 500 Spar stores in multiple formats, including Express, KwikSpar, SuperSpar, Spar, and Gourmet.
New leadership
Bosman says the board “had a couple of options with regards to [replacing] Angelo which had been well thought through”.
“We were very fortunate to have Reeza [Isaacs] in the business as CFO. As you know, he’d [previously] been at Woolworths for 10 years. He’s very accustomed to the listed company environment. He knows retail exceptionally well. He’s very, very well respected in the market and by the banks.
“So he had always been on the plan to be one of the options to step up into the CEO role.
ALSO READ: Spar opening Gourmet stores to compete with Woolworths and Checkers
“Likewise, we’re exceptionally fortunate to have Megan Pydigadu on the team, who was part of the turnaround team in other environments including at EOH and who has been a CFO of a listed company for years.” (Pydigadu moves from the COO role to CFO.)
So this was “actually quite a strong transition” and “quite a straightforward” one, says Bosman
“We realised that there would be a space which would be vital to fill – and that [will] be in the role as managing director of the grocery and liquor business, so that someone could take command of that, and expedite the growth there in a disciplined fashion.
“The board did not feel it was necessary to look outside of the business.”
This article was republished from Moneyweb. Read the original here.