Wendy Luhabe, one of South Africa’s most recognised corporate governance figures, will step down as chairperson of Pepkor Holdings on 30 June 2026, ending more than seven years of board service at the JSE-listed retail and fintech group at a moment of considerable strategic transition.
Pepkor Holdings — key facts & Luhabe tenure at a glance
| Metric | Figure / Detail |
|---|---|
| Pepkor Group (FY2025) | |
| Total group revenue | R95.3bn |
| Operating income | R11.1bn |
| Number of stores | 6,600+ |
| Total customer base | 32 million |
| Digital clients | 10 million+ |
| Fintech revenue growth (FY2025) | +31.1% |
| Financial services revenue (H1 FY2026, 6m to March) | +41% to R3bn |
| Capfin gross credit book | R5.3bn |
| Planned bank launch | April 2027 |
| Bank investment budget | ~R920m |
| Target primary banking customers (5 years) | 1.8 million |
| Wendy Luhabe — Board tenure | |
| Joined Pepkor board | January 2019 |
| Appointed chairperson | December 2020 |
| Effective resignation date | 30 June 2026 |
| Acting chair (interim) | Ian Kirk |
| Other current board role | Richemont NED |
Sources: Pepkor Holdings; Fullview; Voice of Africa; Ecofin Agency
Pepkor confirmed on Tuesday that Luhabe had advised the board she would resign with effect from 30 June 2026, citing a desire to scale back her board commitments. She joined the Pepkor board as an independent non-executive director in January 2019 and was appointed chair in December 2020, also serving as chairperson of the nominations committee — a role she will vacate simultaneously.
Until a permanent appointment is made, lead independent director Ian Kirk will serve as acting chair of both the board and the nominations committee. Kirk joined the Pepkor board in June 2021 and brings with him the experience of his previous role as group chief executive of Sanlam, one of South Africa’s largest insurance groups.
The departure is framed as a personal decision rather than a governance event, but it arrives at a commercially significant juncture for Pepkor. The group, which operates more than 6,600 stores across brands including PEP, Ackermans, HiFi Corp, Incredible Connection, and Shoe City, received approval from the South African Reserve Bank’s Prudential Authority in late 2025 to establish a fully licensed bank. The bank is planned for launch by April 2027 at an investment of approximately R920 million, with a target of 1.8 million primary banking customers within five years. That ambition represents the most structurally consequential shift in Pepkor’s 61-year history — transforming a discount retail group into an integrated retail-banking platform serving South Africa’s mass market.
The commercial case for the banking venture is underwritten by numbers that already point to a financial services business running at scale. In the six months to end-March 2026, financial services revenue grew 41% to R3 billion, with operating profit rising 63.4% to R691 million. The group’s personal loans platform, Capfin, grew its active loan base to 378,000, with a gross credit book of R5.3 billion. Fintech segment revenue has been growing at more than 30% annually. Pepkor already processes millions of financial transactions daily through its store network, insurance products, and digital platforms, giving it an operational infrastructure that most new banking entrants would take years to build.
Its informal market fintech platform, Flash, reported a 20.3% increase in throughput to R34.7 billion, ending the period with 176,000 active traders. Across all divisions, Pepkor’s 32 million customers and more than 10 million digital clients represent a captive market of a scale that established banks have spent decades trying to reach. Capitec, the country’s largest bank by customer count, built its business on a similar mass-market access model — Pepkor’s entry into banking is a direct challenge to that positioning.
The departure of Luhabe is a notable moment in South African corporate governance beyond the specifics of Pepkor. She has served as a non-executive director across a wide range of industries since 1992, and has previously chaired Vodacom and the Industrial Development Corporation. She is a founder of WIPHOLD — South Africa’s first women-focused investment company — and WPEF, the country’s first venture capital fund for women, and holds four honorary doctorates for her contribution to economic empowerment. Her board profile has extended internationally through her non-executive directorship at Compagnie Financière Richemont, the Swiss luxury goods group behind Cartier and IWC, where she represents the interests of the company’s class A shareholders.
Luhabe stepped down as chair of food group Libstar in 2025, and the Pepkor departure suggests a broader withdrawal from multiple chairperson responsibilities rather than any concern specific to Pepkor’s governance or direction. Richemont’s own shareholder communications had, as recently as 2022, noted that she was considering stepping back from one of her chairing roles when her mandate came to term in order to manage her succession in a listed entity in an orderly manner.
The task of finding a permanent successor to Luhabe at Pepkor sits with a nominations committee that she herself has chaired. The incoming chair will inherit a board overseeing not just a retail business with R95.3 billion in annual revenue, but one in the process of building a banking operation from scratch — a challenge that will require both retail and financial services governance depth. The calibre of the appointment, and how quickly the process concludes, will be one of the more closely watched board governance developments on the JSE in the second half of 2026.