GOVERNANCE WATCH
By InsidEntity Editorial Desk · Sep 17, 2026 · 6 min read
Most searches about a chief executive are about pay and biography. This one is about seats.
Simon Baloyi holds a single board seat: executive director of Sasol Limited, held since 1 April 2024, the day he became the group’s President and Chief Executive Officer. Twenty-four years inside the company, two and a half on its board.
The seats he holds
At Sasol he is an executive director and CEO. He does not chair the board. Muriel Dube does, appointed Chairman with effect from 13 September 2024 having joined the board as an independent non-executive director in 2018. She succeeded Stephen Westwell, who retired on 1 June 2024 at the twelfth anniversary of his appointment, a tenure-clock exit rather than a performance one. Martina Flöel became Lead Independent Director on the same date. The separation of chair and chief executive was maintained throughout.
He sits on two board committees, the Capital Investment Committee and the Safety, Social and Ethics Committee, the latter chaired by a separate non-executive director. He sits on neither the Audit Committee nor the Remuneration Committee, which is what the King IV separation of oversight from execution is meant to look like.
Outside Sasol he holds two industry seats and one task-force role.
| Organisation | Role | On the record since |
|---|---|---|
| Sasol Limited | Executive director, President and CEO | April 2024 |
| Energy Council of South Africa | Chairman | Current |
| Hydrogen Council | Board member | Current |
| B20 Energy Mix and Just Transition Task Force | Co-chair | 2025 |
None of the external roles is a listed-company directorship. On the overboarding question, the record is unusually quiet.
The record before
He joined Sasol in 2002 as a company bursar, starting as an assistant process engineer on the gas circuit plant at Secunda. A secondment took him to Particulate Solid Research Inc. in Chicago and to KBR in London as a process design engineer. He returned to lead high-temperature Fischer-Tropsch work, was appointed engineering manager in 2009, and moved into business operations management in 2012.
From there the record is a straight operational climb: Vice President, Operations at Sasol Synfuels; Vice President, Engineering, Centralised Maintenance and Operations; Senior Vice President, Secunda Chemicals Operations; and in August 2020, Senior Vice President, Regional Operations and Asset Services. He reached the Group Executive Committee on 1 April 2022 as Executive Vice President, Energy Operations and Technology, holding that role until April 2024, with Secunda, Sasolburg, Ekandustria and the Natref joint-venture refinery in his portfolio. Two years later the board named him CEO.
He holds two master’s degrees, in engineering and in engineering management, and has completed management programmes at INSEAD and Harvard.
The governance lens
Three things on this record do the work.
The first is tenure. Two and a half years on the board. What is long here is service, not board tenure, and those are different facts. Twenty-four years inside a company tells you about knowledge of the asset, not about distance from management.
The second is control. There is no dual-class structure, no super-voting share, and no removal provision running through a class he dominates. Sasol’s Shareholder Influence score is 5.00, the top of the scale, on a register dispersed enough that no single recorded holder reaches the 20% material-influence threshold. He can be removed by a board he does not chair, on a register he does not control.
That is the ordinary case, and it is worth saying how rarely the ordinary case survives contact with a founder.
The third is succession. He was appointed after a board-run search that considered internal and external candidates, announced by an interim chairman, with his predecessor retained as an executive advisor for nine months to hand over. Process, disclosed, with a named alternative pool.
Where Sasol’s rating sits
| Pillar | Score |
|---|---|
| Director Independence | 5.00 |
| Director Capacity | 2.91 |
| Auditor Independence | 5.00 |
| Shareholder Influence | 5.00 |
| Composite, equal weights | 4.48 |
The pillars reconcile: (5.00 + 2.91 + 5.00 + 5.00) / 4 = 4.4775, rounding to 4.48.
Two qualifications matter for reading this profile alongside that number.
Director Independence at 5.00 is not an assessment. It is the value the methodology assigns in the absence of a signed director independence questionnaire, and none has been filed for Sasol’s board. Equal weighting is the default state that applies until one is. When questionnaires are returned, the published 40/20/20/20 weighting takes over with Director Independence carrying 40%, and on the other three pillars as scored the composite would be 4.58 if that pillar returns 5.00 and 2.58 if it returns 0.00. Those are arithmetic bounds, not forecasts.
The pillar carrying the composite down is Director Capacity at 2.91. That is a board-level measure of bandwidth and commitment spread, not a judgement on any individual director, and least of all on the one whose external roles are three non-listed positions.
Auditor Independence at 5.00 reflects a recently reset engagement, and the circumstances of that reset are worth stating accurately because they are not what they first appear.
Sasol announced in March 2023 that PwC, its auditor since the 2014 financial year, would step down on 30 June 2023, citing the Independent Regulatory Board for Auditors’ mandatory audit firm rotation rule. On 31 May 2023 the Supreme Court of Appeal set that rule aside as ultra vires the Auditing Profession Act. KPMG took the seat on 1 July 2023, one month after the compulsion had been struck down, following a formal tender and under Sasol’s own auditor rotation policy, with shareholder approval at the January 2024 annual general meeting.
So the pillar is not recording a rotation the company was forced into. It is recording one Sasol chose to complete after it stopped being required to, ten years into PwC’s tenure. The clock cannot tell those apart, and on this occasion the distinction runs in the company’s favour.
One watch item follows. KPMG’s first audited year was FY2024, making FY2026 its third. A 5.00 corresponds to the one-to-three-year band, so this score sits in the last year of that band and will step down before this profile is a year old.
Independence, read the InsidEntity way
The Director Independence pillar leans on direct disclosures from directors through the platform’s director risk framework, and where declarations have not been populated the platform presents the default and says so on the profile. Baloyi’s profile is marked Director Verified: No.
But the honest read does not need the questionnaire. An executive director is not independent. Baloyi is management, and the committees he sits on reflect that.
The distinction worth holding is between a director who is not independent because he executes, and one who is not independent because the company cannot remove him. The first is a structure with oversight built around it. The second is a structure built around a person.
On this record, Baloyi is the first kind.
Independent research. Not financial advice. No allegation of wrongdoing is made against any individual named. Director profiles are built from filings and public disclosures.
Know more. Risk less. Decide better.
Sources: Sasol Limited leadership disclosures; Sasol SENS announcements on board and committee composition; Sasol audited annual financial statements; Energy Council of South Africa; Hydrogen Council; InsidEntity director profile and Company Risk Rating for Sasol Limited.
Note on figures: Board and committee composition is as published and should be confirmed against current disclosure. Pillar scores are as at the date of publication and update as corporate information changes.