The 2024 South Africa Board Index covers the 50 largest companies on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange by market cap and includes those companies amongst this group with primary and secondary listings in the country. Once again, the largest company by market cap in the sample is BHP Group (R2 775tn) and the smallest is African Rainbow Minerals (R44 390bn).
The Top 50 companies by market cap are dominated by financial services and industrial companies, together representing 74% of the sample, in almost equal measure.
Information was drawn from publicly available sources. Our cut-off date for board composition data is 30 May 2024. Remuneration data is taken from the most recent annual reports published prior to 30 May 2024.
The point of reference by way of a corporate governance code remains the 2016 King IV Report on Corporate Governance (although at the time of this publication the public consultation over the proposed King V Report had just come to a close).
In some sections South African data is compared with data from our European Board Indexes to illuminate key South African trends in a global setting. The comparison countries, and the number of companies surveyed in each are as follows:
Belgium: 47 companies
Finland: 25 companies
France: 120 companies
Germany: 40 companies
Ireland: 20 companies
Italy: 100 companies
Netherlands: 50 companies
Norway: 25 companies
Spain: 100 companies
Sweden: 25 companies
Switzerland: 45 companies
Turkey: 30 companies
UK: 150 companies
Our Board Index is grouped into the following categories: composition, organisation and remuneration
Notes and definitions
Diversity is considered through a number of lenses. These include Historically Disadvantaged South Africans (HDSA) referring to black, coloured and Indian population groups; gender; age and nationality.
We generally consider separate data sets for board chairs and non-executive directors (NEDs) except where it makes sense to combine them; in these instances we refer collectively to “directors” or “board members”. For remuneration and tenure, chairs and NEDs are reviewed as two different groups, but in relation to diversity (e.g. gender, race and nationality) they are considered as a single group.
Executive directors in this survey are predominantly chief executive officers and chief financial officers.
Non-national directors are defined as being of a different nationality to the company of the board where they are members. If a director has multiple nationalities, one of which is South African, they have been considered South African for the purposes of this review.
The new directors category refers to those who have joined a board in the 12 months preceding the 30 May cut-off date, i.e. between 1 June 2023 and 30 May 2024.
We cite the remuneration data in the currency applied in the annual reports. However, for the sake of comparative analysis, we have converted remuneration figures into South African Rands and reported them across the full participant group; we have also created a subset of the 30 companies that remunerate directors in South African Rands.
We trust you will find this edition of the Spencer Stuart South Africa Board Index useful. If you would like to discuss any of the issues raised here please do not hesitate to contact us.
Spencer Stuart Contributors
Johannesburg Team: Mpho Seboni, Lisa Mariano, Fungai Chigwendere, Matlhatse Malakalaka, Phumla Maboya, Lerato Moepye and Nandika Ballyraj
Europe team: Alexandra Efthymiou, Livia Enomoto, Keith Fryer and Alastair Rolfe