The Secret Millionaire who’s betting that property will recover

Chris Blackhurst
13 May 2009

Thank God! I'm talking to someone who believes the worst is over, who is putting their own money in and, get this, is listing their company on the market.

And not just anyone either. Nick Leslau has made a pile in the past from property and here he is again, raising £200 million to go back into the water. Of that, £20 million is from him, with another £5 million from his sidekick Mike Brown (Mike Slade's former deputy at Helical Bar) and £35 million from the Och-Ziff hedge fund. Already, the City is signed up — the grapevine suggests Leslau has received pledges for the rest of what he needs.

“It's the latest chapter in my commercial career,” says Leslau of the new venture, Max Property Group. “We believe we're listing it at a very exciting time. We're somewhere close to the bottom of the cycle and there are huge opportunities open to anyone in all sorts of real estate close to the bottom.

“If you look back at property in previous recessions, you find that within four to seven years they're back at their peak, that people who bought astutely in those times did extremely well.” He plans to buy commercial properties and add value by restructuring the tenancies or tarting them up and selling them on.

Within 7½ years, Max will be wound up and the proceeds paid out to shareholders. The first five years of the firm's life will be about investing and buying properties, the next two-and-a-half will be devoted to their disposal.

There's no significant development involved, no massive risk — he's not about to don a hard hat. “I don't do holes in the ground. I won't speculatively develop, I won't go into the Kazakhstani suburban resi market or anything like that.”

He's done it before — when he made Burford into a £1.2 billion business by persuading the likes of Ian Schrager to come over here and open the St Martins Lane and Sanderson hotels, by turning round Conran's Butler's Wharf and by spending £1.5 million on a load of clapped-out businesses in Finchley Road, transforming them into the O2 cinema and shopping complex and netting a £50 million profit.

The City can't get enough of Leslau, 49. Indeed, in the past, faith in his magic touch reached crazy proportions. He was one of the “dream team”, along with his longtime friend, colleague and mentor, Nigel Wray, Julian Richer of Richer Sounds and Archie Norman, ex of Asda, who formed a shell company called Knutsford, with just £5 million in cash and the intention of having fun. So convinced were investors in their collective ability and drive that Knutsford's market cap reached £2 billion, with much of the optimism focused on the idea they had Marks & Spencer in their sights.

But success has not always come. Knutsford crashed when Norman suddenly declared he was off to work for the Tories. Leslau was involved with PR guru Matthew Freud in Oxygen, a dot-com incubator that collapsed. His experience with Pharmacy, the Damien Hirst-designed restaurant, also with Freud, wasn't happy.

Leslau also came unstuck in the Trocadero. No sooner did the Piccadilly Circus centre, owned by Burford, open than it was obvious SegaWorld, its “virtual-reality theme park”, was a disaster. Leslau points out that the Trocadero still went on to make £70 million. But in 1997 he quit to set up Prestbury, another property company, with Wray. “I'd left because I was running a £1 billion company, we'd demerged all these firms. I was sitting on several boards, working every hour under the sun and I only owned 2% of the equity. I don't want to run someone else's company. I want to be an owner.”

He later liquidated Prestbury and paid back his shareholders, saying prospects in property were poor. Then, with Wray, he started a new, private company, Prestbury Investment Holdings. This saw him having to deny accusations he was simply trying to avoid having to deal with small shareholders.

But why return now to the market he left? “I was on record when Prestbury delisted as saying that I'm better at running investments than running a company, and the public arena doesn't suit me,” he says. “But this is different. It will only have a 7½-year life — it's more akin to a quoted investment fund.”

Not that mud has ever really attached to Leslau. He's big and genial, and everyone seems to get on with him. With his long hair and hatred of ties, he seems like an English Gérard Depardieu. He's admired and respected, not only because he has made an awful lot of money for his backers and himself (The Sunday Times Rich List says he's worth £120 million, but his Mayfair home, where he lives with his American sculptress/designer wife Maxine and their three sons, has to carry a £30 million price tag, and there's the 100ft yacht and private jet he shares with Wray), but he also, again with Wray, financed Saracens rugby club for 13 years.

Has he lost money in Sarries? “Consistently!” he says, laughing. “I've not lost as much as Nigel. Watching them isn't relaxing. They've been perennial under-achievers for a bit too long now.”

Though Leslau went to private school, his parents were not wealthy — his father was a part-time art historian-turned-jeweller, with a shop in Kilburn High Road. They split when he was nine, and Leslau lived with his mother in Cricklewood. His grandfather paid the school fees for him and his two brothers. He was “miserable” for much of his time at school, although he blossomed later (he went on to become a governor of The Hall and Mill Hill).

“I was right down at the bottom — you should see my reports, although I did click a bit when I was 14.” After a year off (he first met Wray while working in the Late Late store in Belsize Village during that year, Leslau was stacking shelves and Wray, also an old Mill Hillian and something of a City personality, having written the Fleet Street Letter tipsheet, would come in), he ended up going to Warwick University to read German, but left after a couple of terms to study estate management at South Bank Polytechnic.

Property was what he wanted to do. As a teenager, he would turn up to Barnard Marcus auctions, just to watch and learn. He bought his first property at 20 — a large, rundown house in Manchester, full of tenants. He got them rehoused, obtained planning permission to convert it into offices and sold the place for £15,000 — his first profit.

Why make more now, why not put your feet up and watch Saracens? “I'm not hard-wired that way. My aim is to make a lot of money and give it away.” He did a stint on C4's Secret Millionaire last year, handing over £400,000 to those he thought deserving in Glasgow and he's previously, with his family, helped build an orphanage in Malawi. “I'm looking forward to my dotage, to finding things worthy of support and helping them — and in the meantime having a great time. That's important.”

It is. Plenty in the City will agree with that.

Life and Times of Nick Leslau

Born: 1959
Education: The Hall, Hampstead; Mill Hill School; Warwick University (dropped out), then South Bank Polytechnic
First job: trainee chartered surveyor with Burford
Key moves: built up Burford; started Prestbury Group; delisted Prestbury and formed Prestbury Investment Holdings; involved in a series of vehicles, including Knutsford; created Max
Property Group
Interests: walking, watching rugby (co-owns Saracens), playing rugby with sons, being on his yacht.