Founding family's grip on Dis-Chem loosens as Ivan Saltzman's son quits the board

Saul Saltzman, son of Dis-Chem co-founders Ivan and Lynette Saltzman, has resigned from the board of the South African pharmacy retailer, severing the last executive-lineage tie between the founding family and the company's governance.

The resignation as a non-executive director took effect on July 17, according to a directorate change notice filed with the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. It ends a board tenure that ran from the family's 2016 listing of the company and closes a retail career of nearly 25 years spent entirely at Dis-Chem, where Saltzman drove the group's imports and its private-label strategy.

His departure means an ordinary resolution to re-elect him, listed as resolution 4.1, will no longer be tabled at the annual general meeting scheduled for July 31.

A staged exit over 18 months

The move completes a withdrawal that has unfolded in steps. Saltzman resigned as an executive director effective February 27 this year, shifting to a non-independent, non-executive seat while remaining on the board. He was the only child of the founders to work in the business, having been appointed an executive director in 2022 after years inside the operation.

The board thanked him for what it called his invaluable contribution and dedicated service and wished him success in his future endeavours.

The exit sits within a broader generational handover at the top of the company. Ivan Saltzman stepped down as chief executive in July 2023, handing operational control to Rui Morais, the former chief financial officer. He retired from his executive director role on June 30 this year at the age of 75, moving to non-executive deputy chairman. Lynette Saltzman stepped back from her executive director post in 2022 to focus on the group's beauty category. Long-serving executive director Stanley Goetsch, a pharmacist who spent 42 years at the company, retired at the end of June.

A shareholding already redrawn

The board changes have run in parallel with a reshaping of who owns the company. In June 2025 the founders restructured the family's shareholding through their investment vehicle, Ivlyn Local Investment Holdings.

Before the restructuring, Ivlyn held a 29.31 percent stake in Dis-Chem. The distribution cut that interest to 4.06 percent. Ivan and Lynette's two other sons, Dan and Mark, who had held no beneficial interest and no board seat, each received about 12.62 percent, worth roughly 3.4 billion rand apiece, close to $206 million each at current exchange rates. Neither works in the business.

The effect was to move the bulk of the family's economic interest to sons outside management while the son inside management, Saul, has now left the board entirely. The family that built the company retains a substantial combined stake but no longer holds an executive or board role tied to the day-to-day running of the group.

The business the Saltzmans built

Ivan and Lynette Saltzman founded Dis-Chem in 1978 with a single discount pharmacy in the Johannesburg suburb of Mondeor, built around an advertising line that asked whether the price of medicine made customers sick. The proposition of undercutting entrenched pharmacy pricing turned the store into one of South Africa's most recognisable retail brands.

The group reported revenue growth of 9.3 percent to 42.8 billion rand, about $2.6 billion, for the year ended February 28, drawn from a national network of pharmacies, clinics and a healthcare services arm. It has continued to open stores and expand what it calls its healthcare ecosystem while contending with pressure on consumer spending and rising input costs.

Ivan Saltzman is among South Africa's wealthier business figures, his fortune tied to the value of the family's Dis-Chem holding. The company he and his wife built now passes into the hands of professional managers led by Morais, with the founding family present on the share register but stepping away from the levers of control. The July 31 annual general meeting will be the first in the company's listed history at which no member of the family sits for re-election to an executive-linked board seat.