South African financier Magda Wierzycka's controlling Sygnia stake is worth $177 million

Magda Wierzycka holds 90,235,124 shares in Sygnia Limited, the Cape Town asset manager she founded in 2006. The stake amounts to 57.67% of the company and was worth R2.93 billion, or about $176.8 million, at the recent trading level of R32.51.

A holding above 50% carries every ordinary resolution at a general meeting without another shareholder's support. Few founders of listed South African financial institutions retain that position a decade after a public offering.

Sygnia trades on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange under the ticker SYG and on A2X Markets. Its full market capitalisation is roughly R5.09 billion, about $307 million.

Wierzycka is nonetheless described in Wikipedia and in South African newspapers as the richest woman in South Africa, and sometimes as a billionaire. She has publicly declined the title.

City Press approached her in 2018 for its Wealth Index, where she ranked fortieth overall and first among women, with a Sygnia holding then worth R1.108 billion. Her office refused to take part.

"Ms Wierzycka would like to decline, based on the fact that Wendy Applebaum is the wealthiest woman in South Africa, and with the amount of kidnappings, she would not want to bring more attention to herself," the response read. The newspaper reported that she does not want to discuss her wealth.

Poland to Cape Town

Wierzycka was born on October 14, 1969, in Gliwice, Poland, and raised in the mining town of Jastrzębie-Zdrój, sharing a 60-square-metre, two-bedroom flat with her parents, both doctors, her brother, her sister and her grandmother.

The family left when she was 13 and settled in South Africa. She arrived without English and read actuarial science at the University of Cape Town.

Her first position, in 1993, was as a product development and investment actuary at the insurer Southern Life Association. She joined Coronation Fund Managers in 1997 as a director and head of institutional business, and became chief executive of African Harvest Group in 2003.

The buyout

Wierzycka negotiated the sale of African Harvest to Cadiz in 2006, then led a management buyout of the assets Cadiz had not taken and used them to found Sygnia with her husband Simon Peile.

The company started with about R2 billion under management. It now manages roughly R350 billion and administers more.

Sygnia built its position on price rather than performance, expanding in index-tracking and multi-management products, exchange-traded funds and retirement administration. South African active managers had charged high fees for decades and passive investing arrived late. Wierzycka became one of the industry's most persistent public critics of its own charging structures while competing against them.

The company listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange on October 14, 2015, her forty-sixth birthday. By then it was the second-largest multi-management company in South Africa, one of the two largest passive managers, and the largest supplier of international exchange-traded funds to South African investors.

What the business earns

Sygnia reported revenue of R616.1 million for the six months to March 31, against R495.7 million. Profit from operations reached R282.4 million from R221.4 million, and profit attributable to owners rose to R215.6 million from R172.4 million. Headline earnings per share came to 138.1 cents against 113.2 cents.

The board declared a gross interim dividend of 122 cents a share on June 8. On Wierzycka's holding that single payment is worth about R110 million before tax. The shares yield close to 7.84%.

State capture, and Britain

Wierzycka became publicly known in South Africa for something other than fund management. She was among the most persistent critics of state capture under President Jacob Zuma and of the Gupta family's role in it, at a time when few senior figures in South African finance were speaking.

She later concluded that remaining in the country carried unacceptable personal risk and moved to the United Kingdom, saying she would not return.

She spent six years there and founded Braavos Investment Advisers, a London venture capital firm investing in British startups. She was raising a fourth fund when the British government extended inheritance tax to overseas assets held by non-domiciled residents, a change that applied to her.

"The message to my investors is we'll be deploying the capital around the world," she said. "We are not coming to the UK."

She has since returned to South Africa and warned that Britain is losing its appeal for international investors.

A fund she does not believe in

Wierzycka has said she would press a delete button on artificial intelligence if one existed. Sygnia has launched a venture capital fund for South African founders building AI businesses.

She has described the fund as a structural intervention rather than an endorsement, arguing that the technology is arriving regardless and that South Africa will either capture part of the value or watch it accrue elsewhere.

"We have the same intellectual capital in South Africa that is available in the UK or US, but what we are missing is the structured capital behind it," she said in February.

The arithmetic

Estimates of Wierzycka's wealth in the South African press range from $160 million to $250 million.

Sygnia's total market capitalisation of about $307 million sets the ceiling on what the company can contribute to any figure. Her 57.67% comes to $176.8 million at recent prices. A $250 million valuation requires roughly $73 million elsewhere, which a decade of dividends on a controlling stake and the Braavos position could account for, though neither has been independently verified.

Mary Oppenheimer Slack inherited half of Harry Oppenheimer's estate in 2000 and holds voting rights equal to her brother Nicky, valued at between $10 billion and $12 billion. Slack appears on no rich list, because her assets sit in family trusts rather than on an exchange.

Wierzycka's do not. Her holding can be counted to the share by anyone with an internet connection, which is why compilers reach for her name when they need a number.

She holds 57.67% of Sygnia, a stake no other shareholder can outvote.