Sean Summers, Pick n Pay’s veteran CEO, twice over, has described his successor, Woolworths’ Spencer Sonn, as an “extraordinary” executive.
Summers was brought in to salvage the once blue-chip retailer, and says the appointment has followed months of courting, rather than a snap internal decision, with Pick n Pay jostling against other players in the sector to secure him.
“We’ve been very, very fortunate to get Spencer. You can imagine that every retailer in South Africa was after him. People of his skill, his training, his background, his pedigree are very few and far between.”
And Summers has pushed back on the idea that the retailer was forced, yet again, to look outside its ranks for lack of an internal candidate.
“I think it’s strengthening the management layers in the company. We’re introducing an extraordinary level of expertise here,” he argues.
Yet this is no small quibble given that, for 14 years, the board has seemingly not been able to find anyone talented enough on the inside. Summers, who left Pick n Pay in 2007, was initially succeeded by insider Nick Badminton. Then the board appointed Englishman Richard Brasher in 2012. The former Tesco executive did lift turnover, from R55bn to R90bn, and nearly doubled the store count, but critics argued that his cost-cutting had hollowed out the group’s capabilities. Brasher was followed by the Dutchman and former Metro executive Pieter Boone in 2021. And Summers was brought in to salvage the retailer, now listing under an enormous debt load, just two years later.
Sonn will join the company on February 1, while Summers will serve out his contract until May 2028. He has spent more than 26 years in food and general merchandise retail, almost all of it at Woolworths, where he was managing director of the food division from January 2015 to early 2020; reporting to Sam Ngumeni, now Woolworths’ CEO. He is a merchant and operator rather than a finance or turnaround specialist, with his strongest experience in food retail, fresh categories, customer strategy and store operations.
The offshore catch
Sonn most recently ran Woolworths’ New Zealand operations (a separate business from Woolworths South Africa), a market split evenly between franchise and corporate stores. This, says Pick n Pay, is a structure that mirrors its own roughly 22,000-employee, franchise-and-corporate footprint. Sonn left Woolworths in June 2026.
Not everyone is ecstatic. “I still think Pick n Pay has difficulties that aren’t being addressed and Sean could not make a difference. They are so far behind Shoprite that their work is getting harder every single day. Offshore talent is also not the answer and they’ve done it a few times too. It’s getting old,” Casparus Treurnicht, a portfolio manager at Gryphon Asset Management tells the FM.
“I understand the new guy has local roots but Pick n Pay always tried looking for offshore talent and luring people back (and) that’s not served them well in the past,” he says.
Steph Erasmus, investment analyst at Anchor Capital argues that labour costs, not leadership, are the real issue standing between Pick n Pay and a recovery. “It’s a big job; Pick n Pay has fallen behind in the food retail race and is running a business that’s burning cash,” he says.
On the issue of labour relations, Summers declined to detail what remains unresolved beyond confirming that a long-running dispute with unions over working hours is still being thrashed out. Pick n Pay first flagged a 60-day resolution process (that unions pushed back against, with strike threats), more than two months ago.
“Time is what we need, and unfortunately, time is my enemy,” he tells the FM, adding that the company will stay focused on its stated direction rather than respond to outside noise. The market, says Summers, will have to wait for a fuller account when Pick n Pay releases its results at the end of October.
An outside chance
Protea Capital Management’s Jean Pierre Verster has taken a more positive view on Sonn’s appointment.
“We know that Sean (73) is not the youngest CEO around. So the fact that he’s seeing out his term to May 2028 is, I think, reasonable. I don’t think we could have expected anything more.”
What’s more, says Verster, “there’ll be a hand-over period of longer than a year, which could assist in making sure that the strategy is consistent between the current and the CEO designate, and it’s a person with a lot of experience coming ... it looks like a very good appointment.”
In fact, on the decision to make an external hire, Verster argues that this is exactly the kind of turnaround situation where it makes sense.
“My perspective is clearly that there’s change that still needs to happen at Pick n Pay, and it’s much easier to have someone from the outside come in and ensure that change happens, than having someone that was in the business and may be part of the reason for some of the issues that they’re experiencing.”
Verster is more cautious in grading Summers’ own tenure, since the retailer’s two defining milestones remain open: break-even, still roughly two years out, and the labour dispute.
Verster is also wary about the company’s franchise model, which he sees facing the same pressure now hurting Spar: too many parties each extracting a margin in an increasingly competitive market, against an integrated operator like Shoprite that captures scale across both retail and logistics.
Clearly, Sonn will inherit a business whose troubles predate him. A long handover buys Pick n Pay continuity and a credentialed operator from the country’s best-run food retailer, but, as Erasmus points out, credentials alone are no guarantee.