Thoughts of Chairman Leslau

Investment and Asset Management Summit: Serial investor, entrepreneur and chairman of Prestbury Investments Nick Leslau wrapped up proceedings. Here are the best bits… On Secure Income REIT [which has delivered 22% pa for investors] “Basically it’s the most boring business on the planet. Once you have bought the assets, you send out four rent demands a year. It’s boring but it’s deliberately boring. Boring has been the best-performing part of the market for the past two years.” On the spate of long income funds being listed “There have been lots of IPOs basically playing to the QE audience looking for yield. “Cynically, some of these have just said ‘We will offer a 5-6% dividend yield buying some leverage and buying some long income and we don’t really care what it is’, and they will put no money of their own in and they are paid on gross assets, not performance. “So, the bigger you are the more you get paid. What kind of business thesis is that as an investment? It’s pretty lousy, actually, and it will come back to bite investors. On launching a new fund “God no, not at the moment. The headwinds out there are horrendous. It’s not a secret I am a Brexiteer – and, if anything, I am more fervent than I was two years ago. “[But] I am far less concerned about Brexit than I am about a Corbyn government, which will set the country back 20/30/40 years. With the financially illiterate thesis they are putting forward… I don’t want to be in property.” On a new fund in a couple of years? “We need a big shake-up in volatility to excite us about the market… I am not interested in a city building of £70 per sq ft which might have the odd management angle to change.” On WeWork “Forget the valuations, which are bonkers and we all know that. They have captured the zeitgeist, which Regus has yet to do. “Friday afternoons at 4pm are the social epicentre for a huge number of people. They are not nerds… The workplace is becoming the live place for a lot of these young people and it’s incredibly important to them. It’s tapping into something.” On tech/proptech “They are all trying to look for the disruptor but there are not too many left, so they are all trying to make things more efficient. “The problem I have found is: I don’t understand the technology they are talking about. But what I am interested in is the application of what they come to me with. “And 80/90% of them don’t have a clue how to sell it.” On his famous ownership of the Trocadero “I realised we were buggered… utterly destroyed.” To send feedback, e-mail alex.peace@egi.co.uk or tweet @EGAlexPeace or @estatesgazette