Nick Leslau, born 18 August 1959 (1959-08-18), is an English commercial property investor, with an estimated net worth of £200 million.
[3] He is a 30 percent shareholder in Prestbury's AIM listed Secure Income REIT,[4] which owns tourist attraction venues such as Thorpe Park, Warwick Castle, and Alton Towers on a long-term lease to Merlin Entertainments.
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.
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.
[14][15] Leslau pledged to end donations to the Conservatives due to the government's ban on evictions during the COVID-19 pandemic, stating that: "I think the flippancy with which the property industry has been treated has been narrow-minded".