It was bound to happen sooner or later, the news filtered through Wednesday evening via Reuters that GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) were selling their remaining stake in Aspen. Stephen Saad was asked at the CNBC Africa's awards ceremony on Thursday evening what he thought of all of this, and about the future of the business. 28.2 million shares, or 6.2 percent of the business was placed via an accelerated bookbuild. No price was given. Back to the interview, Saad was given the "All Africa Business Leaders Award for Southern Africa" - here is the interview: Aspen CEO wins the AABLA 2016 Entrepreneur of the Year award.
The future of Aspen question was sort of answered, the interesting part was that Saad seems still very energetic. Clean sheet, clean era, looking for more strategic partners and looking to double off the foundation built. It was quite interesting (and we have noted this a few times) that he said that Aspen is still very small. It is and it isn't, in a South African context, this is a big business, in a global context this is still a pretty small business.