South African bank CEOs ranked according to shareholder returns

An analysis by Daily Investor revealed that Michiel Le Roux, Riaan Stassen, and Gerrie Fourie are the CEOs who provided the best shareholder return.

For this analysis, Daily Investor looked at the shareholder return under prominent banking CEOs over the last two decades.

What emerged is that shareholder return was closely linked to the bank and not only the chief executive’s performance.

It indicated that a bank’s share price performance is a team effort rather than attributable to the CEO alone.

Many CEOs also remain on the board after they step down from their executive role to strengthen the bank’s governance.

It is, therefore, not surprising that the shareholder return rankings have clusters of CEOs from the same bank.

For example, the top three CEOs – Le Roux, Stassen, and Fourie – came from Capitec.

The following three chief executives – Sizwe Nxasana, Laurie Dippenaar, and Johan Burger – came from FirstRand.

Shareholder return is also closely linked to market conditions. During a bull market, a poor CEO can easily outperform a good CEO in a bear market.

Even with these caveats, it is still interesting to compare the performance of banking CEOs.

The table below provides an overview of the shareholder return – share price growth and dividends – for the top banking CEOs.