Nick Leslau

Early life and education

The son of a father who was a jeweller and part-time art historian, his parents divorced when he was nine. His mother subsequently worked full-time so that Leslau could be educated at a preparatory school in Hampstead, and at Mill Hill School. Leslau left the University of Warwick where he was studying German, to study surveying.

Career

After meeting Sam Rosen, Leslau joined the ground rent company of commodities traders Burford Group. He became a chartered surveyor with Burford, rising to junior partner in 1982. At 23, Leslau became Chief Executive and, wanting to move further into property, contacted Nigel Wray to engineer a reverse takeover of Wray's listed company Chartsearch in 1986 for £8 million. They expanded the company into a £1 billion enterprise, buying large parts of Oxford Street and the Trocadero centre. However, a poor deal with Sega in the creation of SegaWorld as an anchor tenant meant the company went through some difficult times.

Prestbury

In 1997, Leslau and Wray set up their own small property company Maybeat Limited, which they merged into one of Michael Edelson's Alternative Investment Market listed shell companies called Prestbury Group plc.

The board consisted of Leslau, Wray, Viscount Astor, John Hodson (the then chief executive of private bank Singer & Friedlander) and Edelson. Over the next two years it produced a return of 150% on Net Asset Value and Leslau grew its total value to several hundreds of millions of pounds before taking it private in 2004.

Knutsford

In 1999, Leslau set up an investment vehicle, Edenhawk, together with Wray, Archie Norman and Julian Richer. Once again, they merged the company into an Edelson shell company, Knutsford Plc. The intention was to acquire a retail business to take advantage of the retailing skills of Norman, a former Chairman of Asda, and Richer, who had built up the retail group Richer Sounds. Within weeks the value of Knutsford had soared to £1 billion, attracting attention from financial media around the world as potential acquisition targets were touted by the media such as Marks & Spencers and Sainsburys. The overly speculative valuation was far in excess of anything the "Knutsford 4" and Edelson had anticipated and was in fact becoming problematic particularly because it proved a major stumbling block to concluding any deal. Although Knutsford eventually concluded a deal with WI Link (which continues to trade successfully), it could never hope to achieve the dizzy expectations generated by the media in the weeks after flotation.

Knutsford is cited as a case history in a number of business schools and is considered to have been the end of the dot com boom in the UK.

In February 2001 Leslau set up private company, Prestbury Investment Holdings, funded by HBOS and Sir Tom Hunter, with whom he has since done a number of Scotland-based joint ventures with Hunter's West Coast Capital. Leslau is now chairman and chief executive of PIHL, with the company presently owning a property portfolio estimated to be worth in excess of £4 billion, including four of the UK's largest entertainment complexes run by Merlin Entertainments (Alton Towers, Thorpe Park, Warwick Castle and Madame Tussauds).

Leslau and his business partner Wray bought a Citation X plane in 2004.

Personal life

Leslau and his wife Maxine live in a £30 million property in Mayfair, London. The couple have three sons, and own a Mediterranean-based superyacht. Leslau owns one of W.G. Grace's cricket bats as part of his extensive sports memorabilia collection and is a part owner of Saracens F.C. Rugby Union club.

In early 2008, Leslau took part in the Channel 4 programme Secret Millionaire, giving away £400,000 in a ten-day visit to Possil, Glasgow.