By: Shawn Mars
When Nick Millican joined Greycoat Real Estate in 2012, the firm was respected but limited in scope—essentially a consultancy leveraging decades of property expertise to advise asset owners. Thirteen years later, Nick Millican has transformed Greycoat into an operating partner with a track record of high-profile London projects, strategic partnerships with blue-chip investors like Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, and now, a newly established European platform with offices in Paris. As the firm prepares to relaunch its website and brand positioning, Millican reflects on the journey, the philosophy that’s driven Greycoat’s evolution, and why he believes the next phase of growth lies beyond the UK.
The Transformation
“When I arrived, the business wasn’t really set up or used to buying assets,” Millican recalls. ” Typically, what would happen is someone would already own something, and it would kind of hit a different stage of its lifecycle. They’d want some help with planning and redevelopment or actually doing it, but it was people that already owned the real estate.”
The shift from advisory work to operating partner required more than just new processes—it required new people and new capabilities. Millican set about building an acquisitions team “pretty much from scratch,” recruiting professionals who could identify opportunities, structure deals, and execute joint ventures with institutional capital partners.
The results speak for themselves. Under Millican’s leadership, Greycoat reached peak assets under management of £2.5 billion by the end of 2018-2019. Notable projects include leading the acquisition of a minority stake in MOTO, the UK’s leading motorway service area business, then negotiating its sale to a leading UK pension fund in 2015; the acquisition and redevelopment of Premier Place in EC2, which was entirely pre-let and forward sold to a prominent Asian investor in 2020; and raising approximately £170 million in structured co-investment capital from the principals of a leading European buyout fund in 2021.
Then came a fortuitous decision. “We actually sold out of the vast majority of those properties just before COVID hit, ironically, just more through luck than judgment,” Millican says. That timing left Greycoat with capital and flexibility just as the pandemic reshaped commercial real estate markets globally.
Three Pillars: The Millican Philosophy
While Millican doesn’t explicitly articulate a “three-pillar strategy,” his approach to real estate investment reveals consistent priorities that have defined Greycoat’s positioning: sustainability as a competitive advantage, strategic opportunism in market dislocations, and creating experiential workplaces that meet evolving tenant demands.
Sustainability First
Long before ESG became a boardroom buzzword, Millican was focused on embedded carbon and refurbishment over demolition. “It’s extremely hard to demolish a building and then use what you’ve taken to then build a new building,” he explains. “It’s not really practical. So the more you can retain, the better the carbon footprint of what you’re doing.”
This isn’t just environmental philosophy—it’s business strategy. Greycoat’s 2023 acquisition of 20 Finsbury Dials with Goldman Sachs Asset Management exemplifies the approach: a comprehensive “brown to green” transformation targeting BREEAM Outstanding, EPC A, and WELL Platinum ratings through refurbishment rather than reconstruction. The project even repurposes materials from the building’s old facade by grinding them down and transforming them into tiles for reuse—circular economy principles in practice.
For each new project, carbon budgets are treated with the same rigor as financial analyses. “I think there’s more of a need to invest in buildings now than there has been historically, because of the environmental regulations here changing,” Millican notes. “And so people are kind of forced to make their buildings more energy-efficient.”
Strategic Opportunism
Millican has consistently demonstrated an ability to identify market dislocations and act when others hesitate. Selling before COVID was one example; reinvesting at the end of last year is another.
“Part of the reason [assets are] depressed is the input costs are bigger, so the CapEx has gone with inflation and also the machinery you put into buildings is more expensive because you’re going for a higher performance standard,” Millican explains. “And obviously, interest rates are much higher, so some of the input costs have gone up, and that’s a large part of why values have fallen.”
But here’s the opportunity: “What’s more important for us as a business is there isn’t a huge amount of investors looking to invest obviously, right now for the obvious reasons. So I guess it’s less competitive than historically has been. So you tend to get a couple of people turning up to look at buying something rather than 10.”
It’s classic contrarian thinking—acting when the crowd is paralyzed by uncertainty.
Experiential Workplaces
The pandemic forced a reckoning with office space, creating what Millican describes as a “two-tier market.” “There’s good buildings in desirable locations with modern environmental performance that are doing very well, and rents are actually going up,” he says. “Then there are properties that aren’t really fit for purpose and are in the wrong location that probably needs to be repurposed into something else.”
Greycoat focuses on the former—properties where tenants see the office as competing with work-from-home. “People are actively thinking about how to persuade people to make the commute,” Millican observes. “Some of that is about having just nice space and some outside space maybe, but I think a lot of it is being in a location that has a lot of attractions for people to do after work or before work or at lunchtime.”
As a developer, Millican says Greycoat’s role is ensuring “the bones of the building enable someone to do that. So typically, we’d be very focused on provision of outside space for tenants, provision of an entrance experience that typically would have breakout space, cafe, etc., at the lower ground floor to give a bit of atmosphere and environment for tenants in a building.”
The European Expansion
Greycoat’s move into Europe represents Millican’s most ambitious transformation of the firm yet. “We are intending to open an office in France near term in Paris, which is quite a big change,” he says. “It’s obviously different language, different legal system, different ways of doing business.”
The Paris office, established in 2025 with senior partners Arnaud Malbos and Semih Bayar Eren leading operations, isn’t just geographic expansion—it’s a repositioning of what Greycoat is. No longer simply a London developer, the firm is evolving toward what Millican envisions as a pan-European real asset investment business.
“Depending on how that works through, the obvious one’s Germany, just given the scale of the economy,” Millican says of potential next markets, though he’s characteristically cautious about overextending. Real estate remains “very much a local game,” he notes, requiring physical presence, market knowledge, and understanding of local regulations.
The Specialization Strategy
One of Millican’s core business principles is focus. “One strategy that has significantly contributed to the growth of Greycoat is our focus on excelling in a single area rather than spreading our efforts too thinly across multiple disciplines,” he explains. “By concentrating on one core competency, we have been able to invest deeply in the necessary resources that drive excellence in this area.”
That focus has been on large-scale office refurbishments in prime urban locations, primarily in London. The European expansion doesn’t abandon this focus—it extends it to new geographies while maintaining the core competency.
Millican learned the importance of specialization the hard way. At one point, Greycoat explored residential apartment development. “We recruited some top-notch professionals and dedicated considerable time and resources to it, but we concluded that competing with major housebuilders wasn’t feasible for us,” he recalls. “They had the scale to build more cost-effectively and could afford to outbid us for prime sites.”
The lesson: “Thoroughly understanding the competitive landscape before entering a new market segment” is essential. It’s advice Millican is clearly applying to the European expansion, moving deliberately with experienced partners rather than rushing in.
Looking Forward
As Greycoat repositions its brand and website to reflect its evolution, Millican sees the next 24 to 36 months as particularly promising. “We still feel quite excited about the next phase from the perspective of the assets being a bit cheaper than they used to be,” he says.
It’s characteristic Millican—measured optimism grounded in market analysis, not hype. From his chemistry degree at Worcester College, Oxford, through investment banking at Citi and six years overseeing UK investment and asset management at Rockpoint Group, to transforming Greycoat over the past thirteen years, his approach has been consistently analytical and strategic.
“I think we’ll see over time more and more focus on retention and refurbishment rather than demolition and rebuild,” Millican predicts—a trend he’s not just observing but actively shaping. As Greycoat extends its model across Europe, that vision of sustainable, strategically opportunistic, tenant-focused development goes continental.
For a firm that began as a London consultancy, it’s a remarkable transformation. And for Nick Millican, who orchestrated it, the work is just beginning.
Disclaimer: The information provided in this article is for general informational purposes only and should not be construed as investment or financial advice. The strategies and market trends discussed reflect the author’s views and experiences within the real estate sector. Real estate investments carry inherent risks, and readers are encouraged to consult with qualified financial or real estate professionals to evaluate their specific circumstances before making investment decisions. Past performance is not indicative of future results, and market conditions may fluctuate.
