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# Shoprite has given 13 executives R115 million in shares that none of them can sell yet
- URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/shoprite-executive-share-awards-r115-million/
- Published: 2026-09-16T02:45:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-16T02:44:59.000Z
- Description: Thirteen Shoprite executives were granted R115 million worth of shares last week. None of it was cash, most of it is not theirs yet, and some of it may never be.
- Author: Christian Maidman
- Tags: Companies, Business Bagel News

Paying an executive in shares is a company handing over a piece of itself instead of money, on the theory that the piece is only worth having if the company is worth more later. Shoprite told the JSE on Monday that it had done exactly that on 11 September, granting thirteen executives shares priced at R297.52 each, worth R114.7 million between them. A fourteenth recipient, the wife of finance chief Anton de Bruyn, was granted a further R882,147\. No cash changed hands, and almost none of the shares can be sold yet.

The announcement covers three separate things, and they work differently. The biggest, R57.9 million, sits in the Shoprite Holdings Executive Share Plan: forfeitable shares that vest in three years and only if performance conditions are met. Nearly as much, R56.5 million, is short-term deferred incentive, which is the portion of a bonus already earned that the company pays in shares rather than cash and locks up for two years. The third is a single retention award of R365,950 to Jacques Pienaar, doing the one job its name suggests.

Forfeitable means the shares are allocated now and recorded in the executive's name, and go back to the company if the person leaves early or the targets are missed. What the award eventually pays depends on where Shoprite's share price sits on the day it vests, which is the whole point of doing it this way. The executives are now holding the same thing ordinary shareholders hold, and cannot get out of it for years.

## Who got what

Only two of the thirteen are directors of Shoprite Holdings itself. Ten are directors of Shoprite Checkers, the subsidiary that runs the shops, and one is the company secretary. Chief executive Pieter Engelbrecht has the largest allocation by some distance, R35.46 million across the performance plan and the deferred one. De Bruyn received R14.76 million, deputy chief executive Joseph Bronn R13.93 million and operations chief Willem Hunlun R11.12 million. At the other end, Maude Modise was the only recipient granted shares worth less than a million rand.

A separate line in the same announcement records de Bruyn receiving 36,775 Shoprite shares from the Lazz Family Trust, of which he is a trustee and a beneficiary, at R313.49 a share. That is a transfer of shares he was already connected to, worth R11.5 million, and not a new award.

None of this was volunteered. JSE listings rules oblige a company to tell the market whenever its directors, their associates or the directors of a major subsidiary deal in its shares, which is why an internal grant made on a Friday reaches the public three days later with a sponsor's name at the bottom. Shoprite has not published the rest of the remuneration detail for the year, and that arrives with the annual report. Until then the R115 million is a valuation of shares on the day they were handed out, not a sum anyone has been paid.